{"sf1_id":8408,"sf2_id":"zeRKgZAm","title":"Summer Vacation Of The Living Dead - book 3","author":"Alex Reynard","words":22214,"posted_at":"2005-12-15T18:23:00.000Z","tags":["Adventure","Bat","Cheetah","Coyote","Death","Feline","Ferret","Squirrel","Supernatural"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/8408-summer-vacation-of-the-living-dead-book-3","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/zeRKgZAm","image_url":"https://www.sofurryfiles.com/std/thumb?page=8408\u0026ext=.jpg","description":"#3 of Summer Vacation Of The Living Dead","content":"Summer Vacation Of The Living Dead  \na gruesome little screwball comedy by Alex Reynard  \n  \n  \n-~\\*BOOK THREE\\*~-  \n  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY ONE-  \n  \nOn Sunday morning, after her chores were done, Tish exuberantly ran outside to  \nplay with Max. She didn't give a damn if her parents spotted them in the  \nbackyard. She was proud that her plan had gone off so perfectly, and relived that  \nno one had ended up caught, arrested or injured. She wanted to celebrate, and to  \nshare her joy with her wonderful, special, brave dead brother.  \n  \nMax was out in the shed, snoring like a cement mixer. Instead of his usual nest  \nin the wheelbarrow, he had simply conked out on the floor this time, exhausted  \nnot only from terrorizing a helpless young mouse in his bedroom, but also from  \nthe extra-long roadkill scavenger hunt he'd gone on afterwards to try to balance  \nall the meat he'd had to abandon on Eddie's pajamas. Luckily, fate seemed to  \napprove of his vengeance, for there were corpses littered to and fro like  \nconfetti that night. Apparently the local woodland population had caught a bad  \ncase of the stupids, and a larger-than-average percentage of them had paid for it  \nwith their lives. Sorrowful as always, Max had gorged himself until his stomach  \nstuck out like a pregnant woman's. As he'd limped tiredly back home, he softly  \nthanked all of his midnight snacks for helping to keep him above ground one more  \nday. He felt a calmness in his heart as he curled up like a puppy on the concrete  \nfloor of the shed, and he hoped it meant that, maybe, they forgave him.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; He hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep by the time Tish pounced on him and rolled  \nhim over like a sack of potatoes, shouting, \"Wake up wake up wake up wake up!!!\"  \nBut her sparkling grin and furiously wagging tail kept him from being mad at her.  \nHe hadn't seen her this happy in a long time, and that made him happy too. And  \nyeah, he was feeling a bit frisky himself this morning too.  \n  \nFeeling bold, and wanting to get breakfast out of the way as soon as possible,  \nMax followed Tish up to the house and flattened himself up against the side as  \nshe went in to procure some remnants. She came back with a decent-sized portion  \nof scrambled eggs and some spaghetti sauce she'd forgotten to give him last  \nnight. Max had a little trouble with the tomato part, but they were commingled  \nenough with the meatballs that he was able to force his stomach to not spit them  \nback up. He had begun to hope that if he just got tough enough, he could keep  \ndown small amounts of non-meat. It probably didn't do him any good, but he didn't  \nsee any harm either, and puking every five freakin' minutes or so was getting to  \nbe a real drag.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; After Max had licked off the plates to a sparkling sheen, Tish went back inside  \nto toss them in the sink and then rejoined him. Her plan was for them to simply  \ngo way out into the vastness of the backyard and run around like a couple of  \nidiots until they were completely exhausted. Max thought this was a terrific  \nidea.  \n  \nSo, feeling only a fraction of their real ages, the two siblings ran off together  \nto romp.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY TWO-  \n  \nIt was a gorgeous day for goofing off and being silly in the forest. Tish and Max  \nchased each other through the trees in an extremely loose version of hide-and-  \nseek. Their laughter rang clearly through the treetops and frightened all the  \nbirds. Squirrels dove for shelter as the two coyotes sprinted gigglingly through  \nthe foliage. The hot midmorning sun made them sweaty, and Max stunk to high  \nheaven, but Tish didn't care a bit. Truth be told, she was actually starting to  \n\\*like\\* his stench a little bit, a fact that made her wonder what it said about  \nherself.  \n  \nThere was a tiny, pathetic creek that wound through the woods for a ways. Not  \nreally deep enough for anything other than cooling off their feet, but that was  \nall they wanted to do anyway. Tish and Max raced each other to a big, flat rock  \nat the water's edge. Tish beat Max by a split-second. She slapped down her paw on  \nthe deep-blue stone and shouted \"I win!!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max narrowed his eyes. \"You cheated,\" he said, only pretending to be angry. His  \nbig, sloppy grin betrayed him.  \n  \nTish turned up her nose haughtily. \"Hhmph! Sore loser! I won and there's nothing  \nyou can do about it!\"  \n  \nHe smirked. \"Remember when we watched the black and white version of  \nFrankenstein?\"  \n  \nPuzzled, she asked, \"Yeah, why?\"  \n  \nGroaning like the undead (which, naturally, he was very good at), Max picked his  \nsister up and chucked her gently in the stream.  \n  \nTish let out a shriek of-mock rage. She scrambled ungracefully to her feet.  \n\"Dammit! Now my ass is all wet!\"  \n  \nMax was almost on his knees laughing.  \n  \nTish was trying hard to keep down her laughter too. Silently, she strode briskly  \nover to her brother and ripped one of his ears off.  \n  \n\"Hey!\" Max shouted.  \n  \nTish hurled it off into the distance as far as she could. They both heard a  \nlittle rustle as it hit a bush. She stuck her tongue out at him. \"Nyah. So  \nthere.\"  \n  \nThe fact that she was even able to DO such a thing just made Max laugh harder.  \nFor all the hassle and uncomfortableness and worrying about decomposition, when  \nyou got right down to it, being a zombie was just plain fun sometimes.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish gingerly touched the spot where his ear had been. She could see a little bit  \nof skull poking through. \"No hard feelings?\" she asked.  \n  \nMax shook his head, as if such a thing didn't even need to be said.  \n  \nAs the familiar green foam began to gout forth from Max's head, Tish looked off  \ninto the brush in the direction she'd thrown his sensory apparatus. \"Some crow's  \ngonna get a nice lunch pretty soon,\" she remarked thoughtfully.  \n  \nMax nodded. An ear was considerably less complicated to grow back than a paw, and  \nMax had a new one popping up within a few seconds. He gave it a flick. All  \nsystems go.  \n  \nA natural silence settled comfortably between them and the two coyotes sat down  \nside by side on the big rock. They dangled their throbbing paws in the clear,  \ntrickly water and cooed softly at how good it felt. Nice and cold on their hot  \nsoles. Both of their tails wagged contentedly.  \n  \nAlmost without thought, Tish reached up to fiddle with Max's dark, feral hair. It  \nwas one of the few 'girly' habits she seemed to have developed out of nowhere.  \nMom said it was natural. Put a girl next to a guy with bad hair and her fingers  \nwould twitch til they got their fix. Girl paws were attracted to bad hair like  \nmagnets, she'd said.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; For his part, Max let her do it. Nick usually flinched when Tish tried to fix his  \nhair, but Max almost always stayed still and kept quiet. He liked the feel of his  \nsister's gentle paws nimbly passing over his scalp. He closed his eyes and felt  \noddly serene.  \n  \nTish poked and twirled and messed with Max's greasy locks for a while and  \neventually gave up. There wasn't a damn thing she could do to this chaotic clump  \nof follicles to make it look decent. It was like Max's hair was taunting her. It  \nwasn't even long enough in the back to make a decent ponytail out of! When she  \ntried it, it just looked like a patch of grass sticking out of the back of his  \nhead.  \n  \nMax could tell from her tiny, unaware growls that she was meeting with  \nfrustration. He tried not to chuckle. That was another reason he liked having  \nTish play with his hair; the hair always won. \\_Always\\_.  \n  \nThe two siblings enjoyed the peaceful moment for quite some time. The quieter  \nthey became, the more they became aware of all the nature noises around them.  \nBugs bussing and cheeping. The trickling piano tones of the stream. Birds  \ntwitting and green leaves swishing on their branches in the wind.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Then suddenly, both of them froze like statues. Their ears cocked towards the  \nwind in unison.  \n  \nThey'd heard something new. An awful sound. Far off, like in a dream. But still  \nvery clear.  \n  \nA train whistle.  \n  \n\"But the tracks are on the other side of town...\" Tish whispered uneasily. From  \ntheir bedrooms, they could often hear that low, mournful wail at night, but  \nalways muffled by distance.  \n  \nJust now, it had sounded much too close. And the woods were suddenly deathly  \nstill.  \n  \nTheir fur ruffled up. Something felt very wrong.  \n  \nIt came again. Louder now, and not by just a little. It sounded like it was  \ncoming straight at them.  \n  \nTish and Max both slowly stood up. Neither of them said a word, they only stared.  \nStared unswervingly at the direction the sound was coming from. They found  \nthemselves holding hands without even thinking about it.  \n  \n\"Maybe it's just 'cuz of what happened. Maybe we're just getting freaked out over  \nnothing,\" Max said, trying to sound reasonable.  \n  \n\"But both of us at the same time?\" Tish countered.  \n  \nMax opened his mouth, but closed it when he heard a distant rumble building.  \nComing closer. There was no doubt about it now.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The twins began to slowly back up, in perfect synchronicity.  \n  \nAnd then, louder than the howl of an enraged demon-  \n  \nWHONNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!!!!! WHONK-WHOOONNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!  \n  \nThe train came barreling towards them through the trees, its single headlight  \ncasting about hungrily, as if hunting. It paid no attention to the trees that  \nblocked its path. It knocked them mercilessly aside as if they weighed nothing.  \n  \nAnd most surreal of all, the trees all sprang back into place the second it  \npassed. As if nothing had ever happened.  \n  \nFor much, much too long, Tish and Max were frozen by the coldest fear they had  \never felt in their lives. A zombie was one thing, but a train chasing them  \nthrough the woods was so utterly preposterous their brains could not even  \nadequately accept it. It was worse then impossible, it was unthinkable.  \n  \nBut finally, Tish's sense of self-preservation burrowed up through the thick ice  \nof confusion that had settled over her brain and reminded her that if she did not  \nget out of the way very soon, she would be smeared across the forest floor like  \nstrawberry jelly.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She turned to Max and screamed, \"RUN!!!\"  \n  \nStill in sync, they turned and ran.  \n  \nLike a rabid dog, the train seemed to sense their movement and it put on a new  \nburst of speed. It was excited. The chase was on for real now. Its wheels tore  \ngouging ruts in the soft earth, but it was still travelling faster than it had  \never been designed for. Its wheels sparked and clanged and gnashed in unholy  \nglee.  \n  \nTheir brains rendered useless, Max and Tish ran mindlessly away from the  \nimpossible thing. They were charged up with hot spikes of adrenaline. They could  \nform no plans, create no strategies. Their bodies had only one function; to run  \nas fast as possible or die.  \n  \nThe whistle blew again; a sound so deafening it shook tree branches, caused baby  \nbirds' skulls to collapse and nearly drew blood from Tish's eardrums. It shrieked  \nout in triumph, having finally sighted its quarry after so many long days and  \nnights of searching. Hunting blindly, with only a 'scent' to go by. A single  \nmachine sensory point that told it: THERE. There was where it was. And that was  \nwhat it had been born to kill. To exterminate. To wipe clean. To call the demonic  \ntrain alive would have been not only wrong, but ghastly. It was no more possessed  \nof a personality or emotion than a viral infection. But it had just enough  \nawareness to react, and to perform its function without any trace of mercy.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;  \n'Out of the woods,' Tish finally managed to think. 'We have to get out of the  \nwoods. There's too many things we could trip over. We'll run faster on level  \nground.'  \n  \nMax agreed. 'The big field,' he thought. 'Head towards town.'  \n  \n'Right.'  \n  \nStill holding hands and still not realizing it, the two siblings changed course  \nabruptly, agilely executing a 112 degree turn. If they'd had time to hope that  \nsuch a shift would deter the train or maybe even tip it over, they would have  \nbeen sorely disappointed. The ravenous engine gave off an annoyed snort and cast  \nits headlight around for a few seconds before pinpointing them again. It was like  \na blind man with an exceptionally long and wide white cane. As soon as it had  \nthem in its sights again, it hurled itself into a spinning turn that would have  \ndriven a physicist mad from its sheer contempt of all known laws of motion. It  \nseemed to steer with all eight wheels. It swirled around in a frictionless arc,  \nsending up a tidal wave of earth and dead leaves, and surged forth after its prey  \nwithout losing a second's worth of speed.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish was running so hard that later her calves would feel as if they had been  \nstripped to the bone and had fiberglass ground into them, but for now she  \ncouldn't even begin to think about pain. Right now her mind was locked strictly  \non survival. Speed. Object avoidance. Her focus was as perfect as an Air Force  \npilot strafing in for a kill.  \n  \nSo it came as a huge surprise to her when her toes slammed, crunching, into a  \nhalf-buried stone and she went skidding forward, face down into the dirt.  \n  \nMax let out an unintelligible, babbling wail of panic.  \n  \nThe train blew its whistle again. The end was in sight! Rejoice!  \n  \nWith the same uncanny speed and lack of hesitation he had shown when he'd rescued  \nher from this train the first time (for it was the exact same train that had  \nkilled him; to think anything else was ridiculous), Max stopped dead in his  \ntracks, ran back, and scooped Tish up under his right arm as if she weighed no  \nmore than a doll. Then he took off again and paradoxically, his speed \\*doubled\\*.  \n  \nThe train made a throaty rumble that could loosely be translated as, 'What the  \nFUCK?!?'  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish was finding it hard to believe she wasn't dead. She opened her eyes and saw  \nthe ground flashing past so fast it made her nauseous. She looked up and saw  \ntrees and brush rushing towards her like she'd been shot out of a cannon. And the  \ncannon's name was Max.  \n  \nHer brother, her dead brother who kept having body parts fall off him like a  \njunky old car, was carrying her under one arm and somehow outrunning a killer  \ntrain engine. His eyes were set in an unblinking, alert stare of purest  \nconcentration.  \n  \n'Fuck, there goes all those stereotypes about slow zombies straight out the  \nwindow!' she thought.  \n  \n'I'm as surprised as you are, sis,' he radioed back.  \n  \nMax burst forth from the forest with a bounding leap like a gazelle. For a  \nheartstopping second he was airborne, suspended nearly six feet above ground. He  \ndared to wonder if he could fly now.  \n  \nBut gravity, dependable as ever, soon tugged him reluctantly back down to earth.  \nHe hit the ground running, not making a single dent in his stride.  \n  \nRoaring with fury, the train exploded out of the trees behind them.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; As Max kept on running to beat the devil, never tiring for an instant, the train  \npursued relentlessly. Heck, it didn't even know what a 'relent' was. It was  \nconfused and infuriated now. It could not comprehend how this tiny flesh creature  \nwas outpacing it. It was a tower of steel and raw, greased-up power. This  \nshouldn't be happening. It had Known about its target when Forces Beyond bestowed  \nit with animation. It had been told that the creature it sought would be slow and  \nweak and easily disposed of. Such was not the case, and the train did not like it  \none bit.  \n  \nMax sped through the high golden grass as if it didn't even exist. As if he had a  \nramjet engine strapped to his ass. As if God Himself were pushing him along with  \none of His omnipotent fingers. Tish couldn't even fathom the 'how' of any of  \nthis, so she simply kept still and tried to make herself as aerodynamic as  \npossible. She was just along for the ride, and all she could hope to do now was  \nmake things easier for Max.  \n  \nIf anybody could have seen the inconceivably preposterous chase that was going on  \nin that field on that Sunday morning, they would have either gone mad on the spot  \nor given up drinking forever. A tiny canine boy, hauling ass at nearly seventy  \nmiles an hour, carrying a girl under one arm who was nearly as big as he was. A  \ntrainless-engine with no one at the helm charging after them, shredding up the  \nfield behind it like a monolithic, double-bladed chainsaw. And most insane of  \nall, the ripped up grass and dirt was all flying urgently back into the ground a  \nheartbeat after the train had passed by, erasing its tracks from existence as it  \nwent.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Up ahead, Max could finally see the road. Beyond that there were houses and  \nstores and, eventually, downtown. If they could get there then maybe they had a  \nchance at safety. Unless this monstrous nightmare behind them could rip through  \nmortar and concrete as easily as it could trees.  \n  \nIn the distance, a car was approaching. Inside it was a father of three who was  \nheading home after a short trip to the hardware store. At his present speed, his  \ntrajectory put him smack dab on course for the train to blitz him from the side  \nand reduce him and his car to smithereens.  \n  \nMax saw the car in his peripheral vision, some ways away but coming closer. The  \nlast thing he wanted was to endanger someone else's life, so he swerved at a  \nsharp angle away from the vehicle and forced a small fraction more power into his  \nspeed. Hopefully, the man would be able to brake in time to avoid becoming train-  \ntoejam.  \n  \nThe engine had not seen the car yet. Nor would it have cared one way or the other  \nabout ending an innocent life in pursuit of its prey.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max reached the road, and jumped straight across it. This time, his arc crested  \nten feet. Easily.  \n  \nTish looked down as the ground lurched away from her. As if she and Max had been  \njerked up into the sky by an invisible bungee cord.  \n  \nEyes bulging from their sockets, the man in the car slammed on his braked and  \nstared.  \n  \nMax landed silently, with the grace of a serpent, and kept on running. He was  \ntwenty yards away from the road when he heard the train behind him let out a  \nbellow of... Fear?  \n  \nHe twisted his head around completely backwards to look, and saw something so  \ninexplicable it made his brain hurt. But he still never stopped running.  \n  \nAs soon as the train became aware of the car, it unleased a screech of rage,  \nterror, disbelief and, above all, disappointment. Before the man could swivel his  \nhead around to look at whatever it was that had made that ungodly noise, the  \ntrain had literally leaped up into the air like a bullfrog and drove itself into  \nthe earth with a force so great it vanished completely from sight in half a  \nsecond. Like it had merely jumped off a diving board into the water.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Max? What happened? Did it stop?\" Tish asked, her voice panicky and wavering.  \n  \nHis head still facing his rear, he said dumbly, \"I have absolutely no idea.\"  \n  \nNot about to believe that the train would simply let them get away so easily, Max  \nkept on running until they reached downtown. He passed several people, all of  \nwhom would later tell their respective friends and spouses about some maniac who  \nhad nearly run them down on a motorcycle. It \\*had\\* to have been a motorcycle, or  \nsomething like that, because there was simply no way the furson could have been  \n\\*running\\*.  \n  \nFinally, in a shady, silent alley, Max allowed himself to stop.  \n  \nThe first thing he did was let Tish drop unceremoniously out of his grasp. He'd  \nbeen holding his arm so stiffly around her, the only motion he could coax out of  \nit was to abruptly loosen.  \n  \nTish plopped down on the asphalt with a grunt. She wasn't about to say anything  \nto Max about the rough landing. He'd just saved her life in a manner so  \nspectacular it was nearly hallucinatory. And when she looked at his legs, they  \nwere \\*steaming\\*! \"Jesus, Max! Look! You're on fire!!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max looked down and yelped. He hadn't felt a thing up till now, but suddenly he  \ncompletely remembered what pain felt like. As if he'd left it behind and it had  \nfinally managed to catch up to him. Air friction had ripped his legs to shreds.  \nThey were basically charred bone with a few tatters of scorched skin still  \nbravely clinging on. And they hurt like nothing he had ever felt before in his  \nlife. He felt like an idiot for thinking this new body of his couldn't feel pain  \nanymore.  \n  \nTish looked around but couldn't see any water to throw on him. Her brother's legs  \nwere so hot, his shorts were actually smoldering!  \n  \nMax didn't have any bright ideas himself, so he just did the first thing that  \ncame to mind. He threw himself onto his back and wrenched his legs off, one by  \none. The pain ended instantly as he ripped his red-hot femurs from their sockets.  \nHe tossed both legs as far as he could down the alley where they landed in a  \nclattering, smoking heap. Maybe, when they'd cooled down a bit, he'd be able to  \nput them back on.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish looked down at Max, now a double amputee for the moment, and tried hard to  \ncatch her breath and make sense of what had just happened to them.  \n  \nMax looked up from the pavement. \"It was the same train, right? It's not just me?  \nYou saw it too?\"  \n  \nThe question didn't even need to be asked. She nodded. \"Of course. Why would it  \nhave been a different one anyway?\"  \n  \n\"No, the question is, why the fuck does it want to finish the job?!\" Max  \nexploded. \"Last time I checked, trains were just machines! Inanimate goddam  \nobjects! And they don't run off their tracks, either!!\"  \n  \n  \nShe could hear the torment in his voice. It wasn't bad enough that he was rotting  \nand smelly and he couldn't hug his mom and dad anymore, now he had a killer train  \nto deal with. It wasn't fair. And worst of all, this was somehow probably her  \nfault. She should have known that raising the dead would almost certainly have  \nunforseen consequences. But really, who the hell could ever have foreseen  \n\\*that\\*?!?  \n  \n\"And how did it do that tree thing where they just jumped back into place?\" Max  \nbabbled. \"And why did it just go apeshit when it saw that guy's car? Like an  \nelephant being scared of a mouse! What the hell was up with that? And how could  \nit possibly just dive into the dirt like that!? Like a goddam gopher! Tish, what  \nthe flaming fuckery is going on!?!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; All she could do was shrug. \"I dunno.\"  \n  \nThey waited a while, tensed, alert, until they were sure the train wasn't about  \nto pop up suddenly and chase after them again. Apparently, it really had been  \nscared off, but neither of them had any inkling why. Or why it wanted to kill  \nthem in the first place.  \n  \nEventually, Max's legs stopped smoking. He crawled over on his belly and tapped  \nat them tentatively, expecting them to either be still too hot to handle, or for  \nthem to crumble to ash the second he touched them. Thankfully, neither of those  \nscenarios happened. They were warm, but not blistering. They still felt solid,  \njust very, very dry. Like two limbs off a lighting-struck tree. Figuring it was  \nworth a shot, Max got himself scooted around and tried poking one of them back  \ninto its socket. To his delight, it held fast, and he was able to move it again  \neasily enough. \"Allright!\"  \n  \nTish walked over, impressed. \"Well, that's a little bit of good luck. At least I  \nwon't have to carry you home,\" she said. \"Though, of course, I would if I had  \nto,\" she emphatically added.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max flashed her an 'I know you would' smile as he slapped his other leg back  \nhome. He reached out for Tish's support and she gave him her paw. He got a good  \ngrip and together they hoised him back up to a vertical position.  \n  \nDespite looking like he'd stood a little too close to an industrial blast  \nfurnace, Max's scorched legs still seemed to work okay, although it was a little  \nbit like walking after your legs had fallen asleep. They were completely numb. He  \ncouldn't feel a thing from the butt down. His ankles felt as loose as door  \nhinges. \"I think I can walk if you hold onto me,\" he told Tish.  \n  \nShe nodded and put her arm around his waist. He put his across her shoulders, and  \nthey held paws again. \"Now all we gotta do is get you back to the toolshed  \nwithout being seen.\"  \n  \nMax shook his head. \"Nuh-uh. No way. These legs won't carry me all the way home.  \nThey're gonna splinter halfway there, I just know it.\"  \n  \nTish's ears folded back in worry. \"What're we gonna do then? Maybe go by Nick's  \nhouse?\" she whimpered.  \n  \nMax managed a grin. \"No, we're gonna go to the same place we had lunch \\*last\\*  \nSunday, remember?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Slowly, she also grinned as she got it. \"Good thinking, bro!\"  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY THREE-  \n  \nAfter an embarrassing trip across town that was fraught with peril and near-  \nsightings (like they \\*really\\* wanted to explain why Max smelled like death and  \nhad no skin on his legs), the coyote twins finally made it to that shining beacon  \nof carnivorism; Dooley's. Luck seemed to finally be on their side, because the  \ndumpster out back looked like it hadn't been emptied since the previous  \npresidential administration. Tish went inside the restaurant proper and, with a  \nlittle of the ol' 'pathetic puppy eyes' routine, was able to wheedle a free glass  \nof water out of the sympathetic cashier. Dooley's had a policy against that, just  \nbecause so many people asked and then went over to the soda fountains (which were  \nout of sight of the kitchen) to load up on free pop. But when someone came in  \nlooking as bedraggled and half-cooked as Tish did that afternoon, the staff  \nalmost always looked the other way. True to her word, Tish filled her paper cup  \nwith only water and ice cubes, drained it right there at the fountain, filled it,  \ndrained it again, and took it outside for Max. They had discovered eventually  \nthat his stomach didn't mind water either, although sometimes it leaked out of  \nhim surreally, just like when people got shot in cartoons.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Out back, Max was having the time of his life. He was pigging out on all the  \nhalf-eaten hamburgers he could ever want. He'd been sticking to the streets so  \nmuch lately, he'd neglected the local restaurant dumpsters for a day or two. Now,  \nhe had spread out before him a feast fit for a king. A bountiful crop in need of  \nharvesting. Max shredded garbage bags with drooling zeal and crammed pre-chewed  \npatties into his mouth like a madman. He could \\*feel\\* his legs regrowing, and he  \nlet out a crow of happiness.  \n  \n\"Havin' fun in there?\" Tish asked playfully, knocking on the side of the  \ndumpster.  \n  \n\"Oh HELL yeah!!\" came the reply. \"I'm probably gonna be in here a while. Better  \nmake yourself comfortable.\" He popped up over the side, smirking. \"Or, you could  \nhop in here with me! There's lotsa uneaten french fries!\"  \n  \nShe stuck her tongue out. \"You are a filthy, repulsive beast. Here, I brought you  \nsome water.\"  \n  \nMax accepted it gratefully and immediately upended the cup over his head. He  \n'ahhh'ed in pleasurable relief. \"More,\" he barked.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She chuckled. After saving her ass like a comic-book hero back there, she  \ncertainly did not mind being his waitress for a little while. \"Yes, sir! Anything  \nelse you'd like?\"  \n  \n\"Naw, I got everything I could hope for right here! But thanks a lot for asking!\"  \n  \nTish went back to get a refill, and kept on coming back ten more times or so. She  \ndidn't see the cranky woodchuck lady again, and was mildly disappointed. She'd  \nbeen saving up filthy things to say all week long.  \n  \nAn hour or so later, when every last scrap of meat had been sucked clean from the  \nvarious trash bags in Dooley's dumpster, Max climbed out with a full tummy and  \ntwo fine-looking grey-furred legs. \"Garbage; It Does A Dead Body Good!\" he  \nquipped.  \n  \nTish groaned, but was totally happy to see him back to normal again. \"Race ya  \nback to the house,\" she kidded.  \n  \n\"I think you might lose,\" he understated.  \n  \nThey headed off for home, discussing mostly how Max could have possibly put on  \nsuch an incredible burst of speed. It wasn't as impressive as, say, Superman, but  \nhe probably could have beat Dad's car in a dead heat 100 yard dash. Max's only  \nhalf-hearted guess was that his new body (yes, he knew it was really his old  \nbody, but it was easier to refer to it as such), was more like a machine than  \nbefore. It was tireless, and mostly felt no pain. Max told Tish in all honesty  \nthat he thought he probably could have kept on running from that train forever.  \nEven if the zombie movies were wrong about speed, he said, they seemed to have  \ngotten it right on persistence. He'd felt no fatigue whatsoever. Had they not  \ncome upon the city, Max guessed he probably could have kept on going until either  \nthe train gave up, or his legs simply burned away to nothing. Tish suggested that  \nmaybe later, if he felt like it, it might be interesting to try and see just how  \nfast he could go. Max thought that was a do-able idea, and he told her maybe  \nafter she went to bed he'd get on the interstate and see if he could get some  \nflames shooting up behind him. He chuckled, then remarked also that it'd be fun  \nto challenge Nick to a race and see the look on his face at the finish line. He'd  \nnever, ever, won a race against his cheetah pal in all their lives. At least, not  \n\\*yet\\* he hadn't.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Finally, after a few hours that had felt a whole hell of a lot longer, Tish and  \nMax finally sighted their big, drafty house up on the hill ahead. They'd been  \ncareful all the way to avoid being seen by anyone, and now all they had to do was  \nsneak by Mom and Dad and they'd be home free. They circled around through some  \nscrubby bushes and finally made it to the toolshed.  \n  \nBoth of them collapsed as soon as they entered, exhausted physically as well as  \nmentally. They slumped down on the cool concrete floor, loving the shade in here  \nso very, very much, and let their little red tongues flop out of the sides of  \ntheir muzzles.  \n  \nFor a long while, the twins just sat and panted.  \n  \nThen Max spoke. \"No more adventures today. I'm just gonna sit in here and read  \ncomics all damn afternoon.\"  \n  \n\"Amen,\" agreed Tish.  \n  \n\"Thanks for bringing me all that water, sis. It really hit the spot.\"  \n  \nShe smiled warmly at his graciousness. \"You're welcome.\"  \n  \n\"Those burgers hit the spot too!\" he added, patting his tummy and letting out a  \nlittle burp. \"I think I ate a million of them!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; And that was when the flaming arrow crashed through the window and plunged  \nstraight into his chest.  \n  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR-  \n  \nConsidering all the hell he'd just gone through, Max was more annoyed than  \nanything at the long feathered shaft suddenly protruding from his ribcage.  \nFrightened only of the fire, he ripped the arrow out of himself and beat  \ndesperately at the little flames lapping at his T-shirt. Tish joined in without  \nhesitation. Thanks to their quick thinking, neither of them so much as got their  \npaws burnt.  \n  \nTish looked across the garage at the arrow laying there. It was old-fashioned  \nlooking, maybe even handmade. Broken glass littered the workbench under the  \nwindow.  \n  \n\"What the hell was that?!\" Max burst out rhetorically.  \n  \n\"An arrow,\" Tish replied, innocently enough.  \n  \n\"Yeah, duh, but who shot it?\"  \n  \nAs if in answer, another arrow, this time non-flaming, sailed in through the  \nbroken window and pinned Max's left ear to the toolshed wall.  \n  \nMax yelled \"Ow!\" more from surprise than pain. Again he yanked the arrow out and,  \nwith a glance at Tish, they both decided it might be prudent to vacate the  \ntoolshed posthaste. Getting to their feet, they skedaddled out the door and  \nslammed it behind them.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Tish, I really don't need this,\" Max said pathetically.  \n  \nShe nuzzled him sympathetically. First a train, now a crazed Robin Hood  \nimpersonator. It just wasn't fair!  \n  \nBefore they could even get their breath back, a huge dark shape, looking like a  \nsolid shadow, leaped out in front of them. It took a few seconds just to realize  \nit was a man. A dark man, wearing a long leather trenchcoat and a well-worn wide-  \nbrimmed leather hat. His piercing eyes peered forth from a face so hideously  \nugly, he looked at first like some kind of outer space monster.  \n  \nTish thought he had the biggest nose she had ever seen.  \n  \nWith an artful flourish, the grim interloper brought up his crossbow, aiming it  \ndirectly between Max's eyes.  \n  \nNeither coyote could find the breath to speak.  \n  \nThen the dark man's gaze grew red with passionate hate. He spoke to them in an  \nunnervingly resonant Mexican baritone. \"In the name of the Father, the Son and  \nthe Holy Ghost, I shall send you back to the Hell that spawned you!!\"  \n  \nHe fired the arrow.  \n  \nIt ripped through the air and, despite it's perfectly aimed course, thwacked into  \nthe side of the shed.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max had once again snatched up Tish and tore off like a rocket.  \n  \nMomentarily stunned, the dark man spat out an exotic curse and started to pursue  \nthem.  \n  \nNow it was twice in a single day Tish had found herself looking down at the  \nground flying past her, held safe in Max's clutch as his newly reformed legs got  \ntheir first real test run. At least she was under her other arm now, for  \nvariety's sake. \"I think this guy's nuts!\" she called out over the roar of air  \nrushing past them.  \n  \n\"Nuts and scary!\" Max amended.  \n  \nThe dark man could fly faster than he could run, but he could not aim his bow  \nwith his feet as well as his wings. Still, his legs were strong and solid from  \nyears of use, and Max was nowhere near his top speed yet. With more effort than  \nhe'd counted on, the dark man was able to keep pace. But his quarry bewildered  \nhim. He had encountered the undead many times before, but had never met one who  \ncould run so fast. Like a machine. And the boy's eyes... They were not normal.  \nNot for his kind. Something was not right here.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Still, the monster had the girl, and that situation must be corrected. The dark  \nman's eagle eyes focused on their target, his aim honed to inconceivable  \nperfection from training most other men would not have survived. Using his left  \narm to steady the bow, he lined up his next shot.  \n  \n\\*zinnnnngTHWACK\\*  \n  \nMax yelped and hopped up a few feet in the air as another arrow sank straight  \nbetween his shoulder blades.  \n  \nSqueaking with concern, Tish tried to reach up and pull it out.  \n  \n\"Leave it!\" Max shouted, never letting his stride waver as he pushed on towards  \nthe very woods they'd escaped from earlier. Maybe they could lose this madman in  \nthe trees. \"It doesn't hurt and you'll just unbalance me!\"  \n  \nTish whimpered an 'okay', hating this feeling of helplessness. For whatever  \nreason, she was convinced this crazy archer and the killer train were not in  \nleague with each other. They just gave off completely different vibes. The train  \nwas a mindless killing machine, but the guy chasing them now seemed to be doing  \nso for a reason. Maybe he was even a professional monster hunter. Maybe he could  \nbe reasoned with.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \\*zinnnnngTHWACK\\*  \n\\*zinnnnngTHWACK\\*  \n\\*zinnnnngTHWACK\\*  \n  \n\"Ow! Ouch! Ouch! Yow! Ow!\" Max let out a series of pitiful yelps as five more  \narrows plunged into his back, his ass, and even through his skull. \"Ow!\" Make  \nthat six. He was starting to look like a porcupine!  \n  \nThe dark man shot arrow after arrow. He spat out foul profanities in a dozen  \ndifferent languages as none of them had any effect. It was impossible! Just one  \nof these special arrows had downed other zombies without any trouble at all! He'd  \nalready scored nine direct hits, and the young monster kept on running!  \n  \nSnarling in frustration and bafflement, the dark man roared, \"Unclean creature of  \nthe damned!! Put her down NOW!!!\"  \n  \nAnd to his utter surprise, the little zombie did.  \n  \nFiguring that maybe this was all just a misunderstanding and he might have a  \nchance of talking himself out of this mess if he showed he wasn't really an evil  \nbeast, Max slammed on his brakes and turned to face his tormentor, gently letting  \nTish down to stand beside him.  \n  \nInstinctively, she took hold of his paw.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The dark man stopped too, beyond bewildered. \"That never works,\" he mumbled to  \nhimself. \"It's like the police yelling 'Stop, thief'. The thief never stops...\"  \n  \nGlaring daggers at the huge, broad-shouldered bat in the trenchcoat, Tish stepped  \nprotectively in front of Max. She spread her arms, shielding him. \"Why don't you  \nstop shooting arrows at my brother and go somewhere else and jack off instead?\"  \nshe growled venomously.  \n  \nEver since he'd received his vision in the bar so many nights ago, the dark man  \nhad been prepared for many outcomes to this quest. He had felt his mentor's  \nspirit reaching out to him, showing him a graveyard a thousand miles away where a  \ncorpse was not staying put as it should. It showed him the house on the hill  \nwhere a family lived, a family he had sworn to protect with his life. It had  \nshown him the face of a girl wracked with fear. A face that was now bleeding  \nhatred at him so furiously he actually stepped back. And he was not usually a man  \nto be intimidated by \\_anything\\_ in this world, or beyond it.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; For over a week, he had traveled. Relentless as a demon, he had kept himself from  \nsleep by meditating while in flight. His feet had burned and bled from running  \nacross vast stretches of barren, featureless desert. His only thought was to get  \nhere as fast as possible, to save this girl who he had never before even spoken  \nto.  \n  \nAnd now she was defending the very creature he had been sent to kill?  \n  \nThe zombie poked his muzzle over the girl's shoulder sheepishly. His eyes,  \nmismatched as they were, were those of a frightened animal. But not an evil one,  \nand not an unintelligent one.  \n  \nIn all his travels, the dark man had never encountered a zombie who had retained  \ntheir soul. The ones he had fought before were only mindless, rampaging husks of  \nflesh, thoughtless and merciless, their only drive was to feast on the bodies of  \nthe living.  \n  \nBut not this one.  \n  \n\"You are Teresa Maria Lopez?\" he tentatively asked the girl. Wouldn't that be  \namusing if he'd gone to the wrong house somehow?  \n  \n\"Yeah, but you better call me Tish, whoever you are,\" she said with  \ncharacteristic fire.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"And you are Max Ricardo Lopez?\" the dark man asked the creature.  \n  \nMax nodded. \"Uh huh.\" He reached behind him to pluck out another one of the  \narrows. They were sorta starting to itch by now.  \n  \n\"And you have not harmed her?\"  \n  \nBefore Max could answer, Tish snarked, \"Of course he hasn't! I brought him back  \nand he's my brother and I love him and he'd \\*never\\* hurt me! I don't know who you  \nare and I don't CARE who you are, but you're gonna have to kill me first if you  \nwanna kill him!\"  \n  \nMax, amazed by her bravery, squeezed her paw a little tighter.  \n  \nStill keeping her eyes glued onto the man with the crossbow, Tish tenderly rubbed  \nher cheekfur against his.  \n  \nHis eyes wide in amazement, the dark man stared at them. \"Oh.\"  \n  \nThen suddenly, he did what neither of the twins expected. He dropped to one knee,  \nhead down, and put his clenched winghands out before him; an unmistakable gesture  \nof begging for forgiveness.  \n  \nTish and Max glanced at each other and shared a single thought; 'Huh?'  \n  \n\"I have committed a grave error,\" the dark man intoned. \"I was possessed of a  \nvision from my beloved, departed teacher, telling me I must protect you, Young  \nMiss Lopez. I have travelled a thousand miles from my homeland. I have come here,  \nto a place I have only seen once before in my life, to fulfill a pledge I made to  \na dying woman to protect you and your family with my life's blood. It seems you,  \nYoung Master Max, are not whom I need to protect your sister from. I am ashamed.  \nI apologize from the very depths of my soul.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Neither of the twins quite knew what to do next. Aside from the fact that they  \nstill thought this guy was crazy, they'd never met anyone who talked like this  \nbefore. He sounded like he'd stepped out of some old Zorro movie.  \n  \nFinally, Max gave Tish a 'cool it' gesture and stepped around her, yanking out  \nanother arrow as he did so. \"Uh, you're forgiven, I guess.\"  \n  \nThe dark man looked up, and Max flinched. His face was unspeakably bizarre. Tiny  \ndark eyes peered out keenly amid a wide swath of coarse black fur, incredibly  \nlarge ears, and a nose so gnarled and convoluted it looked like a magnified photo  \nof a fingerprint. \"You have never before beheld one of my kind, have you?\" the  \ndark man asked softly, not at all offended by Max's grimace.  \n  \nMax shook his head.  \n  \n\"Neither have I.\" The bat cocked his head quizzically. \"Zombies, yes. I have  \nslain a hundred or more of your kind. But until this day I have never had one  \nspeak to me, calmly, like a man. You are different, young one, and I do not  \nunderstand why.\"  \n  \nTish came closer and held onto Max again, wanting to be close to him, and also  \nwanting to show this strange man that she had no fear of him. \"I dunno either. I  \nfollowed the recipe as close as I could. Do you mean he was \\*supposed\\* to come  \nout evil?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; His ears stood erect. \"Recipe?\" His eyes widened in dreadful comprehension.  \n\"Young Miss, you have been reading your grandmother's private journals?\"  \n  \nTish was so startled, she actually jumped a little. \"How the hell do you know  \nthat?\"  \n  \nThe dark man grinned. \"I watched her transcribe your 'recipe', little one. I was  \nthere at her side as she wrote the words of the one spell she had tried all her  \nlife to obtain. I was the one who burned the original when she had finished. And  \nI was the only one to whom she told that this spell was more dangerous than any  \nother in the world, and that it must never see the light of day again.\"  \n  \n\"So why'd she want it?\" Tish asked.  \n  \n\"To keep it safe. Keep it hidden.\" He smiled in remembrance, \"And, she was a bit  \nof a perfectionist. She hated incomplete collections.\"  \n  \nMax yanked another arrow out, this one from his head. A little bit of grey matter  \nleaked out, but he didn't notice. \"You really knew our grandma?\"  \n  \nThe dark man straightened up, looking boundlessly proud. \"Of course! She took me  \nin when I was but your age, perhaps even younger. She trained me, sculpted me,  \ntaught me everything she knew. I was her apprentice, her manservant, her  \ndisciple. She was the mother I never had. The only woman I have ever loved.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"And she made you promise, when she died, to protect us,\" Tish reasoned. She  \nremembered him now, dimly. She'd been tiny then, when Grandma died, but she still  \nthinly recalled a large, dark figure who'd been in the house around that time. He  \nhad frightened her as much as he had fascinated her.  \n  \n\"No,\" he softly corrected. \"She did not make me promise. That was my gift to her.  \nMy last gift, as I and your mother and father watched her soul enter the eternal  \nbeyond.\"  \n  \n\"Wow...\" Tish said solemnly.  \n  \nMax pulled out another arrow.  \n  \nHis stoic gaze becoming suddenly concerned, the dark man took Max in his wings  \nand turned the boy around. \"Here, allow me.\" He tenderly extracted the last of  \nthe arrows and replaced them within his coat. He shook his head shamefully.  \n\"Again I must apologize for assuming the worst of you, Young Master Max.\"  \n  \n\"Aw, that's okay,\" said Max, never one to hold a grudge. \"They didn't really hurt  \nmuch. That flaming one scared me a bit, tho'.\"  \n  \nPuzzled, the bat inquired further. \"They didn't hurt? Not at all? No stinging, or  \nburning?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max turned around, looking a bit worried. \"No, why?\"  \n  \nThe dark man withdrew a small glass vial from within his voluminous leather coat.  \n\"Holy water,\" he explained. \"The tip of each arrow has been soaked in this. On  \nevery other zombie I have ever faced, this is the deadliest of poisons. They  \nshriek and shrivel to nothing in a matter of seconds. The fact that you remained  \nunharmed should have told me right away that you were not possessed of an evil  \nnature, but I remain slightly below my usual capacity after such a long journey,  \nand I was not thinking clearly.\"  \n  \nMax nodded. That made sense.  \n  \nTish mischievously snatched the little bottle away from the bat. \"Stop!\" he  \ncried.  \n  \nTish didn't listen. She uncorked the little container and sprinkled a bit  \ndirectly on Max's forehead. Absolutely nothing happened. No hissing or burning  \nlike acid. \"See Max, you're not evil!\" she said brightly.  \n  \n\"Huzzah,\" Max deadpanned as he looked cross-eyedly up at the droplets.  \n  \nUnable to resist, Tish dabbed a few drops of the precious liquid on herself too.  \nNo reaction. \"Oh darn! I coulda swore I was at least a little bit evil\" she  \nkidded.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max giggled. \"You'll always be my evil twin, sis,\" he said, and gave her a little  \nhug.  \n  \n\"Mine too,\" she told him lovingly.  \n  \nThe dark man arched an eyebrow. \"You are indeed very strange children,\" he noted  \nas he retrieved his vial.  \n  \n\"Well, \\*obviously\\*,\" said Tish.  \n  \nHaving known their father well, he was not actually all that surprised. Young  \nCarlos had been a bit of a weirdo too. But he had also been his best friend as a  \nteenager in their small village long ago. The swarthy bat stood up, realizing  \nsomething more. \"I apologize also for not formally introducing myself. I am  \nJavier Rodriguez Gomez deSangr‚ Villareal. I am a vampire bat, and I am at your  \nservice.\"  \n  \nMax grinned. \"A real life vampire? Cool!!\"  \n  \nJavier cringed. He got that constantly. \"No, no, young one. I am a vampire in  \nspecies name only. My ancestors drank the blood of other animals for their meals,  \nbut I do not. Though I do enjoy my steaks extremely rare.\"  \n  \n\"Oh. Okay,\" said Max, grasping the concept quicker than most other people. He'd  \nread about nonev vampire bats in school, and thought they were nifty little guys.  \nHe felt a little dumb for not realizing it sooner, what with their new  \nprotector's distinctive noseleaf.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Vampires of the mythical sort are real though,\" Se¤or Villareal continued, \"and  \nperhaps later I shall tell you more about my many encounters with them.\" He knelt  \nback down. \"But for now, I must ask of you a favor.\"  \n  \nThe little zombie cocked his head. \"What?\"  \n  \n\"I have wronged you, and now I desire balance, and you deserve justice.\" He  \nclosed his eyes and held his wings out to his sides, making himself defenseless.  \n\"You may strike me if you wish. As hard as you deem necessary.\"  \n  \nTo Javier's utter surprise, Max hauled off and punched him in the stomach with  \nthe force of a downtown bus.  \n  \nJavier sunk ungracefully to the grassy ground, eyes wide in stunned  \nincomprehension. He groaned, coughed hard and brought up a dot of blood. \"Dios  \nmio...! You are stronger than I had anticipated, little one!\"  \n  \nMax's tail drooped remorsefully. \"Well, you TOLD me to!\" he whined.  \n  \nBreathing hard, the big bat propped himself up with one arm. \"Yes, but in all my  \nyears of asking that of those I have been unkind to, no one has ever taken me up  \non the offer. Everyone before has always politely refused. I have always thought  \nof it as an elegant bluff. You have some impressively large balls, my young  \nfriend.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max snorted out a giggle. \"Um, thanks.\"  \n  \nTish had to admit, seeing this huge guy getting floored by her scrawny little  \ndead brother was pretty darn funny. She put a paw on Javier's shoulder, helping  \nhim sit up. \"So, you know my mom and dad, right?\" she asked.  \n  \nThe vampire nodded, taking a second to check his stomach over and make sure it  \nwas all still in one piece. \"Your mother, only in passing. We have shared a few  \nconversations, but nothing more. Your father, on the other hand, is one of my  \ngreatest friends. As I served your grandmother, I served him as well. Though we  \nhave not spoken for many years now, I hope we are still friends.\"  \n  \nTish nodded. She thought that, just maybe, this might be exactly the 'something'  \nshe was hoping for that could help break the ice about Max to Mom and Dad. There  \nwas one more thing to clear up though. \"You don't know anything about a crazy,  \nmurderous train engine, do you?\"  \n  \nJavier gave her a look as if she'd had too much tequila. \"I know nothing of which  \nyou speak.\"  \n  \n\"Okay, good,\" Tish said. \"The train that killed my brother just showed up this  \nafternoon, trying to do it a second time. I just wanted to make sure you didn't  \nsic it on us or something.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; He shook his head firmly. \"Never. Not only have I never heard of such a  \nphenomenon, but it would be cowardly to send a machine to face my foe, rather  \nthan meeting them myself.\"  \n  \nMax was really starting to like this guy. If nothing else, his sense of old-  \nschool honor was pretty damn cool.  \n  \n\"Perhaps this is the reason your grandmother's spirit contacted me?\" Javier  \nmused. \"The message was vague at first, but now I see that it is likely she was  \ntelling me to protect \\*both\\* of you, not one from the other.\"  \n  \nMax went 'hmm'. \"Maybe. Did gramma tell you anything else?\"  \n  \n\"No, but she has contacted me before, in the past. I only wish, Young Master,  \nthat I somehow could have been informed of your death in time to do something  \nabout it.\" He sighed. \"Alas, even the spirits cannot see the future. Only the  \npresent and the past.\"  \n  \nTish was about to say something more, when Javier suddenly went totally erect,  \nhis eyes cast to the west. He put a wing up towards her as a warning. \"A train  \nengine, you said?\" he asked softly, sounding deeply wary. \"A large, silver one?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; They both nodded.  \n  \nSlowly, the bat pointed with his other wing to a dark shape lurking in the  \nforest. \"It waits for us.\"  \n  \nConcealed within the trees, it observed. The glow of its single headlight pierced  \nthe shadows. It sat there, motionless. Watching them. Waiting for a chance to  \nstrike.  \n  \nJavier Rodriguez Gomez deSangr‚ Villareal had faced many foes of supernatural  \norigin in his numerous travels and adventures, but never one such as this. He  \nprided himself on his sorcery, of his ability to 'read' his enemies' intentions.  \nBut this... \\_thing\\_ in the forest, this machine, gave off no scent and had no  \nmind to read. All he could tell for sure was that it radiated purpose. And that  \npurpose was not hard to guess.  \n  \nKeeping his eye on the dark, predatory form, Javier slowly stood up and enfolded  \nthe children in his wings. \"Come. It would be best to seek shelter. I do not know  \nwhy it hesitates, but I presume it may fear detection by those that are not its  \nprey. I may confuse it. I hope so.\"  \n  \nSlowly and silently, the three of them walked backwards toward the toolshed, away  \nfrom that unblinking yellow eye.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; It watched them all the way there.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE-  \n  \nIn the shed, the three of them discussed further how Javier had come to their  \ntown, and what he was going to do now that he'd gotten here. The large bat was a  \nmaster storyteller, and both twins sat in fascination, speaking only in  \nquestions, as he related his vision and his journey in grand detail.  \n  \nHe explained further about zombies, how all the others he had ever met were  \nmerely bodies without souls. Grandma had even mentioned to him that the souls of  \nzombified fursons often had no idea what was going on. They'd be having a pi¤a  \ncolada in Hell and one of the demons would mention that their body was running  \namok topside. This often caused them great consternation.  \n  \nHowever, it was said that if and only if a corpse were brought back to life not  \nfor purposes of revenge, but love, there was a chance the resulting creature  \nwould be reborn with their soul intact. And even then, things did not always work  \nout quite as planned.  \n  \nThere was an old folktale Javier had heard as a boy that quite possibly may have  \nbeen based on fact. It concerned a young man whose fiance had died in a gruesome  \naccident on the day of their wedding. Distraught, he had sought out the witch who  \nlived on the edge of the village and begged her for a way to bring her back. The  \nwitch relented, and the man stole off into the night to recover the body of his  \nbeloved. No one ever saw either of them again, except for an old man who one  \nnight spotted two figures dancing slowly and hauntingly in the moonlight of the  \ntown graveyard. When he went to find out who it was, there was nothing there but  \nan open, empty grave.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier said that when Tish had cast her spell, Max's soul must have been  \nliterally ripped from the afterlife and forced back into his body. He asked Max  \nif he could remember anything like that. Max unfortunately did not, though he was  \nkinda curious if he'd gone to Heaven or Hell. Javier chuckled and said to hope  \nthat it was Hell. From everything he'd heard from the spirit world, Hell was more  \nfun anyway, especially for naughty little boys and girls.  \n  \nThe dashing vampire related a few more tales until Martina's voice sailed out  \nloud and clear through the late afternoon air. Dinnertime.  \n  \nTish had an idea.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY SIX-  \n  \nJust as the Lopezes were sitting down to a nice meal, the doorbell rang.  \n  \nMartina growled. \"Always. If it's not the door it's the telephone.\"  \n  \nShe started to get up, but Tish held up a paw. \"I'll get it!\" she cried with a  \nlittle too much enthusiasm. She hopped out of her chair and sped eagerly to the  \ndoor.  \n  \nCarlos and Martina shared a glance, silently asking each other if they thought  \nshe was merely being helpful, or if this might somehow tie in with her secret in  \nthe toolshed.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish's voice rang out from the front hallway. \"Mom! Dad! There's some big weird  \nguy at the door!!\"  \n  \n\"Teresa!\" Mom scolded in a 'Don't be rude!' manner.  \n  \nShe got up, Carlos following, and saw that, yes, the man at the door actually was  \nbig and weird.  \n  \nA formidable, dark, trenchcoated figure stood there, looking like the grim reaper  \ncome to collect all their souls. He lifted away his wide hat, and two enormous  \nears sprang up, along with a fall of black, curly hair. He flashed them all a  \ncharming smile. \"Hola, my friends. I was in town, and decided to stop by for a  \nvisit.\"  \n  \nCarlos looked thunderstruck. \"Harvey?\" he gasped, disbelieving.  \n  \nJavier grinned. \"I can't believe you still remember that.\"  \n  \nBarrelling past his wife, Carlos ran pell-mell towards the stranger and hugged  \nhim fiercely, like a father hugging a long-lost son. It would actually be more  \naccurate to say he was hugging his dear friend like two brothers who have not  \nseen each other in years, for that was very close to what they were. Brothers in  \nspirit, if not in blood.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier wrapped his huge, dark wings around his younger friend with a sound like a  \nleather cloak flapping in the wind. He kissed Carlos once, on the forehead. \"It  \nis \\_good\\_ to see you again, my friend.\"  \n  \nCarlos was grinning so hard he was actually crying. \"You too, mi hermano.  \nDefinitely.\" He broke the hug and stood back a bit. \"Where have you been all this  \ntime? We haven't seen each other since...\" He trailed off. Both of them knew  \nexactly when they'd last seen each other. In this very house, on the day of his  \nmother's death.  \n  \n\"I have been travelling,\" Javier said simply.  \n  \nCarlos clapped a big paw on the bat's back and ushered him inside. \"You must tell  \nus all about it. Come, we were just sitting down to eat. Join us.\"  \n  \nJavier grinned heartily and hungrily. \"A million thanks, my old friend. I haven't  \neaten a proper meal in weeks.\"  \n  \nMartina, who by now had finally remembered their large, swarthy visitor, was  \nalready off and scrambling to set another place. She did not know Javier well,  \nonly that he and Carlos had been inseparable when they were young, and that they  \nhad both saved each other's lives on a number of occasions.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish looked up, wide-eyed, pretending that this was the first time she and Javier  \nhad met. \"Harvey?\" she asked. \"He doesn't look like a Harvey.\"  \n  \nCarlos chuckled and explained. \"My nickname for him. This is Javier. When we  \nfirst met, I mispronounced it 'Harvey', and it stuck. He was your age back then,  \nand I was only six.\"  \n  \n\"Wow, you've known each other a long time then!\" Tish said.  \n  \nThey both nodded. Despite being completely different species, Carlos and Javier  \ncould easily have been brothers. The way they looked at each other was identical,  \nthey way they smiled, even their deep, commanding voices were the same, even if  \nCarlos' was sleeker and Javier's was more flamboyant.  \n  \nThe trio arrived in the kitchen just as Martina was setting out another plate.  \nSmiling warmly, she came around the table to shake her guest's... hand-sorta-  \nthing. 'Bats certainly are built differently,' she thought to herself. \"It's good  \nto see you too. May I take your coat?\"  \n  \nJavier hesitated, but only because his omnipresent garment contained some  \ndecidedly nasty surprises inside. Sharp things. Deadly things. But, never wanting  \nto appear rude in front of a lady, he reluctantly slipped out of it. He handed it  \nto her shyly, along with his hat. \"Be careful with these. My coat contains  \nobjects that are... Delicate,\" he said carefully.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Martina smirked and whisked the vestments off to the coat closet, convinced that  \nJavier's reluctance had been borne only out of sentimentality, the way some men  \nget attached to their favorite shirts or a pair of jeans. 'And they make fun of  \nUS for getting emotionally attached to our little things!' she thought with a  \ntitter. Had she known that Javier's coat actually contained eleven different  \nexcruciatingly-lethal poisons, and at least a few live, trained scorpions, she  \nmight have been somewhat concerned.  \n  \nJavier sat down at the head of the table with a loud, gladdened sigh. Sitting  \ndown was not something he'd done a lot of recently (except for that brief lift in  \nthe sweltering pickup truck he'd gotten a few days back, but the less said about  \nthat, the better). Stripped of his hat and trenchcoat, he still looked  \nimpressively intimidating. He wore black jeans, stained in innumerable places,  \nand a thinly-stretched deep-blue tank top. His voluminous muscles could be seen  \nclearly beneath, and his hair was revealed to be even longer than it had seemed  \nat first, snaking down his back like a waterfall of tangled shoestring licorice.  \nHe had been out in the sun for over a week now, and he reeked exotically of bat  \nsweat and a thousand and one desert odors.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Martina came back to the table and sat down. She was helpless to stop a brief  \nflutter of her heart by the jaw-dropping specimen of masculinity that had  \nappeared in her kitchen. And his thick male scent was making love to her  \nsensitive canine nose. Blushing and hiding a grin, she forced herself to settle  \ndown. She'd felt briefly like a high school girl getting giggly when the captain  \nof the football team walked by.  \n  \nCarlos noticed her flush, but did not comment. He merely smiled a small smile of  \nhis own. Not only was his faith in his wife and his best friend unshakable, but  \nhe was secure enough in his manhood that he could freely that admit Javier made  \nhim look like a wet noodle in comparison.  \n  \nTish merely wondered if she could talk Javier into letting her play with his hair  \nlater on. All that gorgeous, messy hair...  \n  \nThe Lopezes' guest took in a deep breath through his amazingly intricate nose.  \n\"Ahhh... Martina, what is it you have prepared? It smells exquisite!\"  \n  \nShe blushed a bit and lifted the lid off the casserole dish. \"It's just my chili  \ncheese surprise. Nothing special. It's got little cut up hot dogs in it, see?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"You are being modest, my beautiful hostess,\" Javier crooned suavely. \"A meal  \nneed not be made with expensive ingredients to remain a magnificent feast. It  \nonly requires love and skill, of which I'm sure you have provided plenty.\"  \n  \nMartina absolutely could not resist a giggle at that. She was sure her blush was  \nshowing through her fur.  \n  \nCarlos chuckled and rolled his eyes. Even as a teenager, Javier had been  \npossessed of a tongue so silver it gleamed.  \n  \nTish was just eager to finally get some food in her tummy. She was quite fond of  \nlittle cut up hot dogs.  \n  \nAs everyone reached for serving spoons, Javier suddenly shouted, \"Wait!\" His eyes  \ntwinkled. \"I have just had a marvelous idea. Pardon me; I will be back shortly.\"  \nWith that, he sprang up from his chair and sought out the closet where his coat  \nhad been hidden. The three coyotes exchanged brief glances.  \n  \nIn almost a split-second, Javier was back, brandishing an astoundingly ancient-  \nlooking bottle of wine in one outstretched winghand. \"Brugginio Adolpho, 1866.  \nTheir best year. I have been saving this for quite some time. Tonight we shall  \ndrink hearty in celebration of our friendship!\" he regally declared.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Martina's eyes bulged. \"Are you saying that wine is almost a hundred and forty  \nyears old!?\" she sputtered.  \n  \n\"Indeed,\" Javier replied. \"And so far as I know, this is the only known remaining  \nbottle in existence.\"  \n  \n\"How much is it worth!?\" she yelped.  \n  \n\"Millions,\" he tossed off, as if he couldn't care less.  \n  \nShe gaped at him in astonishment.  \n  \nTish butted in. \"How the hell'd you fit that in your trenchcoat?\"  \n  \nJavier and Carlos suddenly looked at each other and shared a secretive grin. They  \ngiggled like naughty young boys.  \n  \n\"Javier has many secrets,\" Carlos said simply.  \n  \nAs his friend sat back down and prepared to pop the cork, Carlos added, \"So,  \nwhere exactly did you pick that up? I don't remember it from any of our  \nadventures together.\"  \n  \nJavier dislodged the cork with a pocketknife and it went screaming around the  \nroom for a few terrifying seconds, ricocheting off the ceiling before finally  \nbeing caught by an expertly timed clutch of one of his footclaws. \"Tuscany,\" said  \nthe bat. \"It was a gift from a very old woman, to thank me for getting rid of her  \nhusband.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Didja kill him?\" Tish asked breathlessly.  \n  \n\"Oh no, my dear. He was already dead,\" Javier tossed back.  \n  \n\"What!?\" Martina squawked.  \n  \n\"A ghost,\" he elucidated. \"He had been driving her mad for years because he did  \nnot approve of how she was spending her inheritance. I am a man who believes that  \ncivility towards females of any age or species is a virtue. One that too few  \nmales aspire to these days. And yet they should. Even a dead man should have  \nmanners.\"  \n  \nMartina looked somewhat stunned. \"Sooo... You're an exorcist?\"  \n  \nJavier chuckled. \"Sometimes. I freelance.\"  \n  \n\"A freelance exorcist!?\"  \n  \nThe vampire bat took a sip of wine. \"I am many things...\"  \n  \n\"Come now, dear, it's not all that strange,\" Carlos told his wife reassuringly.  \n\"You know full well what Mama was, and you married me anyway.\"  \n  \nMartina closed her muzzle. He had a point.  \n  \nTish poked back into the conversation. \"What do you mean, 'what Mama was'? You're  \ntalking about Grandma, right?\"  \n  \nCarlos looked a little uncomfortable. He sipped a little wine before answering  \n(and it was indescribably good. It made every other sip he'd taken in his life  \ntaste like piss in comparison). \"Um, That is something private, my little moon.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"You mean her being a witch?\"  \n  \nCarlos had already swallowed, but Martina managed to perform a nice little spit-  \ntake on behalf of both of them. The two shocked coyotes stared at their daughter.  \n\"What do you know about that?\" Carlos demanded softly.  \n  \nTish shrugged. \"I saw her stuff up in the attic once. I don't mind or anything.  \nHeck, I think it's pretty cool!\"  \n  \nMr. and Mrs. Lopez goggled at one another. The deep, dark secret they thought  \nthey had kept hidden from their daughter her entire life was not only out in the  \nopen, it was also 'pretty cool'!  \n  \nJavier let out a hearty chuckle. \"You are surprised? Look at your daughter! I  \ncould see right away she is an inquisitive and intelligent child. And such a  \nsecret as one's past should not even be a secret at all. Teresa, my dear, you  \nshould be \\_proud\\_ of your grandmother!\"  \n  \n\"That's TISH,\" she corrected. \"And I am.\"  \n  \nCarlos did not often look foolish, but he certainly did at that moment. He turned  \nto his daughter and softly took hold of her paw. \"I am sorry I never told you,  \nlittle moon. I just... I worried about how you would feel about her. I wanted  \nyour memories of your grandma to be happy ones, not clouded by silly Halloween  \nideas.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish nodded seriously. \"I understand. I never did think that though. I'll always  \nremember her like she was, but the witch stuff just makes her even cooler. I  \nmean, how badass is that? My Grandma used to cast spells 'n stuff!\"  \n  \nRelieved by her attitude and by finally having the secret out and deflated,  \nMartina was about to give Tish a pat on the head, when an alarming thought  \noccurred to her. \"You didn't... \\*try\\* any of those old spells, did you?\"  \n  \nTish shook her head. \"No way,\" she lied magnificently.  \n  \nJavier hid a chuckle with a mouthful of casserole. And after all the foodless  \ndays and nights he'd suffered through to get here, his reaction to it was much  \nthe same as Carlos' had been to the wine.  \n  \n\"Your grandmother was the wisest woman I have ever known,\" he said after he  \nswallowed. \"She taught me many things, and I would not be a fraction of the man I  \nam today without her teachings.\"  \n  \n\"Does that mean you do magic too?\" Tish asked, knowing perfectly well already,  \nbut trying to make things look good in front of her parents.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier nodded. \"Oh my yes. I could tell you many, many stories...\"  \n  \nCarlos suddenly laughed so hard he nearly spilled his wine all over himself. He  \nturned to Javier with a grin that nearly split his face. \"Why don't Mexicans  \nbarbecue?\" he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.  \n  \nAn even bigger grin exploded over Javier's muzzle. \"Because the beans keep  \nfalling through the grill!!\" he bellowed.  \n  \nThe two men began to laugh uproariously, loud as donkeys, even pounding their  \nfists on the table and crying.  \n  \nTish tittered, but the joke hadn't been THAT funny. Geez!  \n  \n\"Um...\" Martina started, wondering why her husband and his friend had seemed to  \nsuddenly go mad. \"What exactly...?\"  \n  \nCarlos wiped his eyes. \"Oh, my dear, forgive me. It was from a long, long time  \nago.\" He glanced at Javier, asking with his eyes, 'Would you like to start?'  \n  \nJavier did. \"It was back in the days of my youth. I was a hot-blooded young man  \nand your father,\" pointing his fork at Tish, \"was a little younger than you are  \nnow. Back then, I was your grandmother's assistant and her student. She taught me  \nthe ways of sorcery, and in turn I performed chores for her and ran errands.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"And kept me out of trouble,\" Carlos noted.  \n  \nThe bat nodded. \"Yes. Especially that.\" A chuckle. \"Anyway, one day in early  \nsummer, she needed some supplies for her healing poultices, and the best place to  \npurchase them was across the border; here. I asked if young Carlos could  \naccompany me, since he was my best friend at the time, hopefully still is, and he  \nhad never before seen the United States.\"  \n  \nMartina leaned over her plate, nibbling at it absentmindedly as she listened. She  \nknew so very little of her husband's childhood. She hoped that maybe this story  \nwould lead to others, and the topic would become less uncomfortable for him.  \n  \n\"So, the next morning, young Carlos and I set out. I had just reached the age  \nwhere I was permitted to drive, and so I had purchased the ugliest brown pickup  \ntruck that God has ever seen fit to allow on this earth.\"  \n  \nTish giggled.  \n  \nCarlos did too. \"Honestly. This thing could frighten small children and make  \nwomen faint.\"  \n  \nTish guffawed.  \n  \nJavier cleared his throat, steering the storytelling back to himself. \"We drove  \nfor many, many hours, but it seemed like no time at all, for we had one another's  \ncompany. We discussed a thousand and one things that day, not a single one of  \nwhich I can remember right now.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"We had just crossed the border into Texas and had stopped at a convenient  \ngasoline station. As Carlos watched from the passenger seat, I went inside to  \npay, and then returned to begin pumping the gas.  \n  \n\"The next thing we knew, three extremely rude young American men pulled up next  \nto us in a considerably less dreadful-looking pickup. A silvery blue one, with a  \nlarge American flag painted on the roof. They apparently noticed the pass ticket  \nin my window, because one of them leaned out of the window and shouted the  \ninsensitive but mildly amusing joke of which your father and I have already  \nrelated.\"  \n  \n\"Then another one, the driver, shouted to his companions, but also to us, 'How  \nmany Mexicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?'.  \n  \n\"And after a beat, another one answered: 'Juan!'\"  \n  \nTish rolled her eyes at the very thin little pun.  \n  \nJavier was not smiling now. His tone became more serious and contemplative. \"The  \njokes themselves were not so cruel. In fact, from a kinder voice, they might even  \nhave coaxed a smile from me on another day.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"But I still remember now how those men laughed at us. Loud and viciously, as if  \nwhat they had said was the most brilliant thing anyone had ever before uttered in  \nall of history. To them, we were not real people. We were 'foreigners'. 'Others'.  \nWe were something to be made fun of, and nothing more.\"  \n  \n\"Jerks,\" spat Tish.  \n  \nCarlos gave her a look that said he was very proud of her. \"I watched through the  \nwindow as Javier's whole face turned red. Pride has always meant a great deal to  \nhim, but I was not quite old enough to feel anything but embarrassed. I asked  \nmyself inside, 'Am I different, because of where I come from? Am I somehow not as  \ngood as those men in the other truck?\"  \n  \n\"I stood there and stared back at the American men without saying a word,\" Javier  \ncontinued. \"Had it just been I alone, I might have let them go on their way,  \nsecure in the knowledge that foolish, ignorant men such as they will always come  \nto ruin at their own hands, if given enough time. But my young companion was with  \nme. And I could see shame on his face. And I could not allow that.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; He glanced at Carlos. 'You finish it, my friend,' his eyes said.  \n  \nThe coyote again took up the tale. \"The three men left their truck to go inside  \nthe gas station. Laughing all the way, like small, stupid children. They had left  \ntheir truck unattended.  \n  \n\"Javier came over to me and leaned in through the window. He told me to cover my  \neyes and count out loud to ten. I knew, even before I had said 'one', that my  \nfriend and protector was about to make use of what my mother had taught him.\"  \n  \nTish and Martina had both stopped eating, completely wrapped up in the story.  \n  \n\"I heard not a single strange sound as I counted, only the rush of traffic, and  \nJavier's footfalls. I heard him speak low, long words for a moment. I did not  \nhear, smell, or feel anything out of the ordinary. And then he was walking back  \nto me, and when I had finished counting and looked up, he was leaning through the  \nwindow again, with the most satisfied smile on his face a man can have.  \n  \n\"'Look, little one,' he said. And I looked.  \n  \n\"In the space of ten seconds, Javier had turned the blue pickup truck completely  \nupside down, and had done so without making a single sound! It was resting on its  \nroof and the edge of the bed. To this day, I don't think he even laid a finger on  \nit.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier nodded. \"This is true. Partially because I do not have fingers, but go  \non...\"  \n  \nCarlos did. \"The three Americans came back out, and the sweetest sound in the  \nworld was their laughter dying in a heartbeat as they saw what Javier had done.  \nMy friend leaned quietly against the side of our truck. I stared out the window,  \nelated by the miracle I had witnessed, but also fearful that trouble might  \nfollow.  \n  \n\"One of the men shouted at us, asking us what we had done with his truck, and  \npeppering his speech with many vulgar swear words.\"  \n  \n\"\\_Many\\_,\" Javier agreed.  \n  \n\"Javier replied with another riddle: 'How many Texans does it take to change a  \nlightbulb?'  \n  \n\"The men stared at us in shocked silence, awed by my friend's complete lack of  \nfear.  \n  \n\"He got back inside the truck and closed the door. He leaned out the window at  \nthem. 'None,' he said, 'They get their daddies to hire Mexicans to do it for  \nthem'.  \n  \n\"Then we smiled at them and drove away.\"  \n  \nThe table was silent for a single instant.  \n  \nThen Tish and Martina both started laughing so hard they nearly wet themselves.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN-  \n  \n\"Vampires are not legends,\" Javier said seriously, as if he were giving a lecture  \non higher mathematics. \"They are as real as you and I. As real as ghosts and  \nzombies, brujas and curanderas.\"  \n  \n\"What's a curandera?\" Tish asked.  \n  \n\"Your grandmother was one,\" Javier explained. \"You have seen the movie, \"The  \nWizard Of Oz\", yes? This is true: there are both good witches and evil ones. Some  \nuse their powers to heal, and others to amass power and wealth for themselves,  \nwhile strangling their own spirits more and more every day. A bruja is a bad  \nwitch, a curandera is a good witch. Your grandmother, my teacher, was, in her  \ntime, the greatest curandera in all the world. At least, in my own humble  \nopinion, she was.\"  \n  \nTish nodded, comprehending. She didn't really know much Spanish, a fact she was  \nmildly ashamed of since both her parents had come from Mexico, but she did enjoy  \nthe language. It was a language of taste instead of sound, each word having its  \nown spicy, savory flavor. It was a passionate, artistic language. Tish hoped  \nshe'd have the opportunity to finally take a spanish class next september in  \njunior high.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Okay. Back the vampires,\" she said eagerly.  \n  \n\"Yes. The vampires,\" said Javier. \"As I have mentioned, I am a vampire bat, and  \neven I do not know if my kind were named after their kind, or they after us. What  \nI do know is that we are very different. My wild ancestors were no bigger than  \nstrawberries, and would nip at cattle in the night to feed themselves. They live  \ntogether in great, vast colonies, and they are among the most generous species on  \nearth. The females all take care of the young together. And when one bat has come  \nhome hungry, another will often share their own meal with them to keep them from  \nstarving to death.\"  \n  \n\"How?\" Martina asked.  \n  \n\"Regurgitation, of course,\" Javier said, as if it should have been obvious.  \n  \nThe coyote stuck her tongue out, sorry she'd asked.  \n  \n\"As my kind evolved into what I am now, we lost the burden of having to feed  \nexclusively on blood, and gained the ability to eat and drink as any normal man  \ndoes. A fact I am very grateful for, since your casserole was the finest meal I  \nhave eaten in months,\" he told Martina in complete honesty.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She smiled, a bit flattered. \"Well, thank you. Glad you liked it.\"  \n  \nThe food had long since run out, but they were still all gathered around the  \ntable, mesmerized by the continuous flow of stories from their fascinating,  \nexotic guest, all of them as entertaining as they were impossible. Most of them  \nas unbelievable as fairy tales, were it not for the things the Lopezes had all  \nseen to confirm their beliefs in matters of the beyond. What Javier spoke, no  \nmatter how bizarre and disturbing, they believed.  \n  \nThe wine had dwindled to a few last drops that everyone secretly wanted and of  \nwhich they were all too polite to actually accept. Tish had even asked for a sip,  \ncurious about what the grownups were 'ooh'ing and 'ahh'ing over. She'd taken a  \ntiny drink from her father's glass and her nose had wrinkled up in disgust. \"It's  \njust spoiled grape juice!\" she'd exclaimed in disappointed disgust. Javier had  \nlaughed thunderously at how perfectly true her assessment was. Tish went to the  \nkitchen to rinse her mouth out with some soda pop.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; As the desert sun sank leisurely, filling the house's windows with darkness, the  \nstories continued. Javier had lived his life more fully than many men three times  \nhis age. He was older than Tish's father, but looked younger somehow, as if he  \nhad reached his mid-twenties and decided to stop there for a while. He had seen  \nthings and heard things and tasted things and done things that no ordinary man  \ncould ever dream of. And now he was in possession of a storyteller's greatest  \njoy; a rapt and eager audience.  \n  \n\"Supernatural vampires, on the other hand, do need blood,\" he explained with  \ntranquil certitude. \"They must feed on the blood of other living beings at least  \nonce a month, every month, or they die. However, there are good and bad vampires  \njust as there are good and bad witches. Or good and bad coyotes, for that matter.  \nSome vampires live perfectly respectable lives, are good mothers and fathers, are  \nfriends to normal men without them ever suspecting a thing. They drink only when  \nnecessary, from willing volunteers, and never a single drop more than they need.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Others have realized a dark truth that often leads weak hearts into corruption:  \nthe more blood a vampire drinks, the more powerful they can become. If a vampire  \nwere to feed every day, and if they were to completely drain their victim and  \nleave them as a stricken, lifeless husk, then that vampire could easily possess  \nthe strength of fifty men, and other more dangerous powers of mind and body as  \nwell.\"  \n  \nEveryone at the table shivered, even Carlos (who'd actually met a few himself).  \n  \nJavier made strange winghand gestures to illustrate his lesson. \"The downside is  \nthat, once you begin to feed every day, you must \\*continue\\* to feed every day.  \nEternally. If you take in several gallons of blood one time, you must take in an  \nequal amount the next. Or else... \\*unpleasant\\* things begin to happen to one's  \nbody.\" Javier winced, saying without words that he had seen these unpleasant  \nthings with his own eyes, and they were not to be spoken of in pleasant  \nconversation. \"A smart vampire will take small sips only when needed, and live a  \nlong and healthy life. But a foolish one will lust for power, and doom themselves  \nin the end.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The big bat sighed in fond remembrance. \"I remember one time long ago when I had  \nto save a Japanese concubine from a blood-hungry pack of vampiric street punks  \nwho intended to drink her dry. Miss Yuki was actually a vampire herself, and was  \nknown for the very unique services she could provide to her clients-\"  \n  \nMartina cut him off with a cough, a glare, and a quick glance at Tish. \"I don't  \nthink this story is appropriate for children,\" she said pointedly.  \n  \nJavier, so wrapped up in his tale that he'd somewhat forgotten who he was telling  \nit to, stopped immediately and blushed. \"Ah. Forgive me.\"  \n  \n\"Poop,\" Tish muttered sourly. That had sounded really interesting.  \n  \nWhen her mother wasn't looking, Javier gave Tish an 'I'll tell you about it  \nlater' look, and she perked up. He knew she was a big girl, and the story was  \njust her type. Exciting and spooky, if a little bit lewd. Ah well. The hero had  \nto get the girl in the end, right?  \n  \nAnother thought came to Tish's mind, from seemingly out of nowhere. \"Hey, um,  \nDad? Why exactly did you 'n Mom have to leave Mexico? You never did tell me.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The smile on Carlos' face shattered in an instant. But he was not angry with his  \ndaughter for asking the question, only saddened by the awful memories it brought  \nup. He sighed solemnly. \"It is a very bad story,\" he said simply.  \n  \n\"It has to do with Grandma, right?\" she uttered quietly. She had somehow guessed  \nthat part long ago, although she had no concrete reason why.  \n  \nCarlos and Javier exchanged painful glances.  \n  \nMartina looked sad and a little lost. Even she didn't know the whole story. She  \nhad met a dashing and impulsive young coyote one day when her car had smashed  \ninto a fire hydrant on a busy street and he had rushed in like a white knight to  \nher aid. His generosity had first attracted her to him (and his hot bod certainly  \ndidn't hurt matters any), but it was his genuinely pure and softly wise  \npersonality that had made her want to stay at his side.  \n  \nAnd then suddenly, barely three months later, her new love had come to her,  \npanic-stricken, and asked her if her love was strong enough that she would  \nconsider leaving her hometown, her home country, forever to flee with him to the  \nUnited States. She had never been able to pry the whole story from him, but he  \nhad admitted that his mother was a witch, and that certain people were now angry  \nwith her. \\_Extremely\\_ angry. Martina had taken stock of her life in the space of  \na few minutes, and then she had begun to pack. The next day she had said goodbye  \nto Mexico forever.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Carlos took in a deep breath. He closed his eyes, unable to withstand his  \ndaughter's gaze. Her eyes seemed somehow much too wise sometimes. As if his  \nmother had passed on some part of her magic into the girl as a final gift.  \n  \n\"My darling little moon...\" he said to her. \"It was a long time ago, and it is  \nalso a long story. A very sad story. A story of cruelty and the betrayal of a  \ngood, good woman. It is a story that could make anyone lose their faith in all  \nmankind. It is the past, and right now it is getting late. It will be your  \nbedtime soon. We should save this story for another day. There is not time to  \ntell it now, and I am not sure if I could anyway.\"  \n  \nTish's small ears drooped silently. Her expression became disappointed, but  \nthoughtful. This was something she had wondered about her whole life. Neither of  \nher parents had ever spoken of it. Why had they left Mexico so abruptly? Why  \nhere? Why \\*this\\* house, so specifically? And did it have anything to do with why  \nGrandma had become so ill in her last years?  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Though questions crowded her head, she forced them to settle down and behave. The  \nexpression on her father's face was unmistakable. It wasn't that there was no  \ntime to tell the story, it was simply that he did not want to. Whatever it was,  \nit caused him intense sorrow just to think about it. She wondered if somehow, he  \nhad caused whatever it was. Or blamed himself anyway.  \n  \nThe young girl glanced over at the large, hushed bat at the opposite end of the  \ntable. Javier's arms were crossed stiffly, and his lips were set in a scowl of  \ndeep, deep fury. But none of it was directed at Carlos. No, when Javier's eyes  \nchanced over at his old friend, they changed for an instant to a look of regret  \nand comfort. This terrible thing that had happened, Javier certainly did not  \nblame his younger friend for it.  \n  \nThe table was silent now. The cheerful mood that had hovered about them like a  \ntwinkling mist had evaporated, leaving a chilled, moist feeling behind . No one  \nseemed to know what else to possibly add.  \n  \nIt was time then, Tish decided.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She cleared her throat.  \n  \nThe adults looked at her.  \n  \nShe cast a tiny nod at Javier, letting him know that she was ready. He returned  \nthe nod, and readied himself as well.  \n  \nThen Tish looked back and forth at each of her parents. Her expression became  \nthat of a sorry toddler who hopes dearly that her punishment will not be as  \nsevere if she admits to her mistake. \"Mom, Dad, I gotta confess something.\" She  \npaused, hesitating. \"...I kinda lied when I said I never tried out any of  \nGrandma's spells.\"  \n  \nMartina gulped hard. \"What?\"  \n  \n\"Which ones did you try?\" Carlos intoned fiercely. He, much more than his wife,  \nknew how dangerous even white magic could be if fooled around with by an amateur.  \n  \nTish bit her lip. She was taking slow, deep breaths. She could feel their gazes  \non her like hot water bottles on her cheeks. \"Just one,\" she squeaked.  \n  \n\"\\_Which\\_ \\_One\\_?\" Carlos growled low at her.  \n  \nShe looked up to him, her eyes pleading for forgiveness, understanding and love.  \n\"I had to, Daddy. I had to. When Max died... I just couldn't... I...\" Her voice  \nwavered.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She was saved by the sound of the basement door swinging open.  \n  \nFrom the dining room, they all had a perfect view through the kitchen to the  \nbasement doorway. All four looked up.  \n  \nA small, shabby figure stepped forward.  \n  \nCarlos became a statue.  \n  \nMartina lost the ability to breathe.  \n  \nMax took two more shuffling steps, his head down, his tail tucked between his  \nlegs. He had been waiting all evening for this. Sitting on the basement steps,  \nresting with his back to the door, listening eagerly to their conversation. He  \nhad even put one of those little evergreen car air fresheners around his neck, to  \nmake himself more presentable.  \n  \nTish had not given him a specific signal to listen for, just that she would let  \nhim know when the time was right to show himself. And she had, through only her  \nemotions. Max picked them up on his special radar. It was as clear as if she had  \ncalled his name.  \n  \nThe little zombie's mismatched eyes were wide with fearful apprehension, with a  \ntiny flicker of hope shining desperately through like a ray of light. He looked  \nat his parents, whom he had not seen in close to a month now, but it had felt  \nlike forever nonetheless. All those long, lonely hours by himself in the shed, or  \nout scavenging for meat in the night.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; He said nothing, but one single word seemed to emanate from his very soul:  \n\\*Please\\*. 'Please don't be scared of me. Please don't chase me away. Please let  \nthings go back to the way they used to be. Please let me love you again and be  \nyour son...'  \n  \nMartina Lopez, her mouth hanging slightly open, felt tears forming in her eyes.  \nIn slow motion, she began to stand up from her chair and push it aside. She took  \na step towards the monstrous/wonderful sight in the basement doorway. Her heart  \nfluttered in a million different directions at once.  \n  \nAnd perhaps it was partially due to her ignorance in such matters as the occult  \nand real life zombies that she found it so suddenly easy to look past the rot and  \ngrime and see her own little boy trapped beneath. She took another soft step  \nforward, and another. She was completely unaware of how Tish and Carlos and  \nJavier were looking at her. It was if they had all ceased to exist.  \n  \nHer eyes riveted on this impossible thing that had appeared in her kitchen, she  \ncame closer and closer. Hesitantly, she approached, as one would approach a dead,  \nrabid animal that might not actually be all the way dead. But that was not what  \nhe was. She could see that. His eyes were not dead. They were Max's eyes. She was  \nlooking into her son's eyes again, just like in the thousands of prayers she had  \nwhispered to the sky after he had been cruelly, pointlessly torn away from her.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She reached out a shaking paw to touch the creature's face.  \n  \nMax put his own paw up, softly cupped hers, and brought it to his cheek. He felt  \nher fingers in his fur, a sensation that nearly overloaded his heart.  \n  \n\"M-max...?\"  \n  \nHe nodded just scarcely, never taking his eyes off hers. \"I love you, Mommy.\"  \n  \nA great, gushing cry leapt from Martina's throat as she crumbled to the floor and  \nthrew her arms around her little boy, letting her tears flow freely now as she  \npressed Max to her breast and cradled him in her perfect mother love. Max gave  \nher as big a hug as he could, nuzzling at her shoulder, his tail starting to wag  \nfuriously. \"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you...\"  \n  \nShe sniffed back a sob and kissed his forehead. \"I love you too, my son... My  \nlittle sun...\"  \n  \nCarlos, finally, tore his eyes away from the impossible scene he was witnessing  \nand turned his gaze to Javier. Disbelief was on his face as heavy as housepaint.  \n\"You knew?\"  \n  \nThe big bat nodded. \"It is why I came, my friend. Why your mother summoned me.  \nNot to destroy him, but to protect him.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Hope flared brightly. \"Then he's not-?\" Evil, he meant to say. Mindless, cold,  \ndead. But those ugly words would not come out of his mouth.  \n  \nA firm shake of the head. \"He is Max. All of him. Body and soul.\"  \n  \nIt was a testament to Carlos' absolute trust in Javier that he believed him in an  \ninstant, without any hesitation. Javier could have told him the tooth fairy was  \nreal, and he would have seriously considered the possibility. Carlos turned to  \nTish. \"You did this? This...? How...?\"  \n  \nShe shrugged a little. \"I just wanted to see him again,\" she said. A simple,  \nhonest explanation of a child who has not yet learned that some things are  \nimpossible. A girl who has not grown up and left childish dreams behind. And  \nhopefully, never will.  \n  \nCarlos stood, and walked over to his daughter. Leaning down low, he placed his  \npaw on her hair and nuzzled her ear gently. \"I'm not mad at you,\" he whispered.  \n  \nShe murred in relief and nodded, giving him a grateful hug.  \n  \nTaking his daughter's hand, Carlos walked over to embrace his lost son again.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Martina was still crying, but through her tears she saw her husband approaching  \nand made room for him. Carlos knelt at Max's side and the little pup immediately  \npounced him in total joy. Martina snuggled back in, and there was even room for  \nTish to join them as well.  \n  \nMax felt as if he had become happiness. Not merely that he \\*was\\* happy, but that  \nhe had been transformed into the very \\*embodiment\\* of happiness. Pure,  \nconcentrated joy. Things had turned out better than he had ever allowed himself  \nto hope. No screaming. No chasing. No hitting. No fear. Just hugs and happy  \ntears.  \n  \nHe was home again.  \n  \nAnd back in the shadows, Javier stood regarding them. A warm, peaceful smile had  \ndrawn across his lips. He had seen many things in his travels. Most of them  \nhorrific. Most of them vile and terrifying enough to drive weaker men mad. But  \nuntil today, he had never seen this. He had never seen a reunion so beautiful, a  \nchild in his parents' arms, not letting even death stand in the way of loving  \nthem again.  \n  \nThis did not end things, no. Not by a long shot. There were still many questions  \nnow. Hows and whys and what to do nexts. But this was certainly a good start.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; With this much love, there had to be a way to bind this family back together  \nagain. For good, and forever.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT-  \n  \nFar from the embrace, far away from the laugher and the love, deep in the forests  \nbehind the house on the hill, it waited. Its headlamp shone steadfastly through  \nthe leaves, like a great cat's single eye. Watching them. Smelling them.  \n  \nIt had no concept of urgency or anticipation.  \n  \nIt could wait forever, if it needed to...  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER THIRTY NINE-  \n  \nNeedless to say, bedtimes were disregarded that night.  \n  \nThe four coyotes and their guest all crowded together in the livingroom; the  \nLopezes on their wide, red couch, Javier sprawled contentedly in an armchair.  \n  \nThere, the grownups all listened in awestruck fascination as Tish and Max  \ndivulged their secrets. Tish told about the books in the attic, the recipe, and  \nher quest for ingredients. She told them about the night in the graveyard when  \nshe had cast her spell. (Javier had to bite his tongue about a dozen and a half  \ntimes at various places in her story. The girl had tried her best to follow the  \ndirections as exactly as possible, but in her inexperience, she had made so many  \noutrageous errors it was a miracle she had not accidentally blown herself up, or  \nroused every single corpse in that cemetery into an army of the walking dead.)  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max told of how it had felt coming back to life. How it was not at all like  \nwaking up from a nap, but rather it was like a department store's lights all  \ncoming back on in the morning, one by one. At first he had been just barely  \nconscious, aware only of sensation. And then his mind began sluggishly to rebuild  \nitself. He felt for a second what severely retarded people must feel like every  \nday. Then he became more aware, and gradually smarter, and more of his memories  \nbegan to return and settle themselves into place, and then he was finally Max  \nagain. And more importantly, he could \\*feel\\* his sister's presence again.  \nSomehow, even in death, it had felt wrong that she was not with him anymore.  \n  \nTogether, the twins described their Sunday experiments: Max vomiting up orange  \njuice and going bonkers for bacon. Running wild through the grass. Smashing his  \nhand on a tree for amusement. They told of reintroducing Nick to Max, and of all  \nthe fun they'd been having in the toolshed since. (Mom and Dad nodded. Mystery  \nsolved there.)  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; And shyly, surprising even Tish, Max solemnly told about his midnight raids of  \nthe roads. About scrounging around in dumpsters and forcing himself not to think  \ntoo hard while he was cramming roadkill down his throat. His mother and father  \nhugged him consolingly. Carlos vowed that Max would never, ever have to do that  \nagain. That he'd sell the car if he had to, and buy him a million bunless  \nhamburgers from Dooley's if he wanted. Max gave his father an enormous hug for  \nthat.  \n  \nTish and Max even told their parents about Eddie. Earlier, they had decided to  \nconveniently leave that part out. But now they were caught up in their  \nstorytelling and couldn't stop. And beside, it felt somehow like cheating to not  \nbe completely honest with their parents now. So they told them everything. The  \nconfrontation in the supermarket, sneaking into the house, Tish at the fuse box,  \nMax hiding under Eddie's bed and scaring the piss out of him and then blowing  \nchunks like no man had ever blown chunks before. By the end of it, Carlos and  \nMartina were laughing so damn hard they couldn't possibly be angry at their pups.  \nTheir two wonderful, creative, clever, devious little pups.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; And then, in hushed tones, they spoke of the train. Of the impossible chase. The  \nunimaginable loudness of the whistle. The trees springing back into place. Max's  \nburning legs. The subsequent raid on Dooley's dumpster. Carlos cast a wondering  \neye at Javier, asking what in the name of God could such a thing be? Javier could  \nonly shake his head and regretfully admit that he had no idea.  \n  \nThe big bat went on to finish the tale, redescribing his calling and his week-  \nlong journey. Speaking shamefully about the arrows he had plunged wrathfully into  \nhis best friend's son. And then about Tish's idea of a farce to bring all the  \nelements to the table over dinner.  \n  \nFinally, the story became the now.  \n  \nMidnight was approaching, and there was neither the time nor the energy left to  \ndiscuss the future. All of them understood perfectly that they couldn't just have  \na zombie living in their house forever. If nothing else, there was only so much  \nmeat available in the city. Not to mention what the neighbors would think. But  \nnone of them spoke of it. For now, Max was home. For now, his mother and father  \ncould hold him and cuddle him and kiss him all they wanted (neither of them said  \na single word about his stench, and for that he was very grateful). Everyone  \nwanted to keep this moment perfect and pure. Planning for tomorrow could be done  \ntomorrow.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Carlos and Martina practically drowned their son and daughter in goodnight  \nkisses. As a family, they all walked upstairs with Max to share in the moment of  \nhim finally being able to see his own room again. He opened the door and grinned  \near to ear, tail wagging. Everything was as he remembered it. And except for the  \nthings Tish had scavenged for him for the toolshed, everything was in its proper  \nplace. He thanked his mom and dad for not getting rid of all his stuff. Martina  \ngave him an odd smile and said that some strange feeling kept on telling her that  \nthat would have been a bad idea, and that she should just leave everything be  \nuntil the time was right. She was glad she had trusted her instincts.  \n  \nMax's bed was about the most comfortable thing in the entire universe at that  \nmoment (especially compared to that rusty ol' wheelbarrow!). He slipped between  \nthe covers with a long, satisfied sigh. Soft as a cloud.  \n  \nMartina and Carlos tucked their son in as they had when he was a little kit. As  \nhe snuggled up with his favorite stuffed animal (A big black wolf named Thunder.  \nAnd even though Max was twelve, NO ONE was ever going to tell him he was too old  \nto still sleep with Thunder. Thunder was a \\*cool\\* plushie), Max closed his eyes  \nand felt their kisses on his forehead. And then one more, as Tish couldn't resist  \nadding one herself. Javier even stepped forward to place his thumbclaw gently  \nupon the boy's brow. He mumbled some soft, musical words, and explained that they  \nwere a prayer of protection. He said he wasn't sure if it would work on zombies,  \nbut that it was certainly worth a try. Max laughed warmly, and told the big bat  \nthat he did feel a little safer.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; As his family and his protector padded softly out of the room, Max rolled over  \nand closed his eyes.  \n  \nHe felt Tish lingering in the doorway. \"Thanks,\" he whispered.  \n  \n\"You're welcome. And welcome home, Max.\"  \n  \nHe gave her an appreciative murr in response, and felt sleep pulling her wispy  \npurple blanket over him.  \n  \nTish closed the old rattly door as quietly as she could and padded down the hall  \nto her own room, feeling an unbounded pride in her heart.  \n  \nMax let himself fall into dreams, and he slept peacefully.  \n  \nThat is, until a strong voice coming from inside his own head woke him up again.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \n-CHAPTER FORTY-  \n  \n'Teresa.'  \n  \nHer first reaction was to grumble, still half asleep, \"Tish, you dummy...\"  \n  \n'Tish then,' the voice continued. 'Wake up.'  \n  \n\"No. Wanna sleep. Tired.\"  \n  \n'I must speak with you, Tish. And it must be now. Get up.'  \n  \nOnce the young coyote had blinked the greeblies from her eyes and managed to  \nfling the sheets off of herself, she began to realize just how fucked up it was  \nto be having a conversation with a voice in your head. That was psycho stuff.  \nNuthouse stuff. If this voice started telling her to go get a gun and start  \nblowing away everyone she saw because they were all actually bug-eyed aliens from  \nRigel 7, she'd have to tell it to kiss her furry little ass.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; A low chuckle. 'No, nothing like that. I only want to talk.'  \n  \nTish stiffened up in fright. Oh shit! Whatever the hell it was it could read her  \nthoughts!  \n  \n'A brilliant deduction, young one. Now get some clothes on. Meet me in the woods  \nbehind your house.'  \n  \nPuzzled and more than a little frightened, Tish got up and began scrounging  \naround for some clothes. 'But what about the train?' she asked mentally, figuring  \nthat talking out loud wasn't really necessary in this situation.  \n  \n'Never mind that. I'm keeping the train at bay. No more chatter, just come to  \nme.'  \n  \nShivering a bit, Tish nodded and pulled on her sandals. Things were starting to  \nget even weirder; something she hadn't thought possible just a little while ago.  \nWhen she'd gotten herself suitably dressed, she padded to her bedroom door, the  \nmoonlight turning everything a dull, gauzy purple, and crept out into the hall.  \n  \nThere, she was surprised to come face-to-face with Max, almost bumping noses with  \nhim.  \n  \n\"What're you doing up?\" he asked.  \n  \n\"Um... I heard a noise.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; He cocked his head. \"A voice, you mean?\"  \n  \nTish felt a breeze of relief. \"You heard him too? I'm not nuts?\"  \n  \nA shake of his shaggy head. \"Not unless we both are. Some guy's voice was in my  \nhead. He told me to get up and meet him in the woods.\"  \n  \n\"He told me that he had the train at bay. What the heck's that sposto mean?\"  \n  \n\"Maybe he's going to tell us how to get rid of it, whoever he is,\" Max ventured.  \n  \nTish kneaded the hem of her tanktop a little. \"I don't know. Didn't he sound  \nkinda creepy to you? Kind of, I dunno, arrogant?\" She felt safe in saying this;  \nfor whatever reason, she'd felt strongly that the voice had vanished the second  \nshe ran into Max. Why though, she had no clue.  \n  \n\"Yeah. I thought he sounded sly. Maybe not evil, but cunning.\"  \n  \n\"You wanna just go back to bed and forget about him then?\" Tish asked, hoping she  \ndidn't sound too chickenshit.  \n  \nMax seemed dead set against that. \"No way. I've got a weird kinda good feeling  \nabout this. I think he wants to help us. Come on.\"  \n  \nHe reached out to take her paw in his. Tish felt a flashing overlap of memory as  \nthe moment suddenly fused with the night so many years ago when he'd led her  \ndownstairs to see the lightning in the graveyard.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The house was empty, silent and covered in a blanket of grey dimness, making  \neverything look like it was shot in black and white. The twins eased themselves  \ndown the big staircase, instinctively avoiding all the squeaky spots. They turned  \ninto the kitchen, still holding paws, then suddenly stopped cold. The side door  \nwas already open.  \n  \nA silver chill went up Tish's back. \"What the hell does that mean?\" she  \nwhispered.  \n  \nMax was about to reply, when a dark shape passed suddenly in front of the open  \ndoor.  \n  \nBoth kits barely kept themselves from screaming.  \n  \nA soft laugh. \"I am sorry if I frightened you. I see you have been summoned as  \nwell? I am oddly not surprised.\"  \n  \n\"Javier! You scared the living snot out of us!\" Max said, panting a bit.  \n  \nThe dark shadow grinned. \"Let us hope our visitor is less scary than I am then,\"  \nhe kidded lightly.  \n  \nTish and Max followed him through the open door and the big bat shut it  \nnoiselessly behind them. They looked off into the woods, and could see a tiny  \nblue light twinkling to them from out of the darkness.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"There,\" Max said, pointing.  \n  \nThey went.  \n  \nThe night itself was not as spooky as it could have been, and that was a  \nblessing. The moon was high overhead and the air had a calming coolness to it.  \nBut still, every rustle of grass their paws made ratcheted the trio's nervousness  \nup a notch or two.  \n  \n\"Do you know what that voice was?\" Tish asked quietly of Javier.  \n  \nHis eyes narrowed. \"No. But it seemed familiar somehow. Like from somewhere deep  \nback in my memory. We shall soon see, little one. No worries. Whatever it is, I  \nwill protect you.\"  \n  \n\"From a guy who can talk inside our minds?\" Max fretted.  \n  \nThe big bat tossed him a glinting grin. \"Such things are my specialty.\"  \n  \nMax believed him, and felt a little better.  \n  \nThe closer they drew to the blue light, the more they gradually realized that it  \nwasn't actually attached to anything. It was like a pinprick to another world,  \nhanging there in space. The three furs approached in awe and crowded around the  \nfloating sparkle. Max put out his paw to touch it, and it vanished instantly.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; They were now alone at the edge of the woods.  \n  \nThey all exchanged looks that said, 'What now?'  \n  \nFrom deep within the forest, there came the cry of some unearthly bird.  \n  \nThen, unhurriedly, a fog began to approach them. It rolled lazily along the  \nground, only a few inches high, but displaying a skin-crawling sense of purpose.  \nOf \\*intelligence\\*.  \n  \nTish and Max clutched fearfully at one another. Javier stepped closer to the  \nlittle ones and placed his winghands on their shoulders.  \n  \nThe mist of grey oozed up to within a few feet of the trio and stopped. It began  \nto grow. It rose upwards in a loose column and eventually began to congeal,  \nforming shapes. A furson began to appear from within the formless mass, as if the  \nmist were giving birth to him.  \n  \nJavier held the children closer. His eyes were cautious and steely.  \n  \nWhat emerged from the fog, or rather, transformed from it, was a man about seven  \nfeet tall who seemed composed entirely of sharp, pointy angles. He was a white  \nfeline wrapped up in a long, dark, reflective purple cloak. His hair was  \nlightning-blond and stood straight up from his head in an electric shock. His  \narms were crossed regally. He had no lower body; roils of mist plumed forth from  \nbeneath the end of his cloak, looking like an eternally emptying cauldron. His  \neyes were slitted and cruel. And they had violet irises.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The voice that they had at first heard only in their heads burst forth from the  \nspectral figure, louder and more resonant than they could have ever imagined. \"I  \nAM THE BRINGER OF ENDINGS AND BESTOWER OF BEGINNINGS. BROTHER OF SLEEP AND SON OF  \nNIGHT, I AM THANATOS; LORD OF THE DEAD.\"  \n  \nShaking like a leaf, eyes as wide as saucers, Max squeaked, \"Um, hi.\"  \n  \nThe feline eyed him with mild curiosity. Appraising him. \"You're more different  \nthan even I expected,\" he eventually said, as if very nearly impressed.  \n  \n\"Is that a good thing?\" Max dared to ask.  \n  \n\"For you, yes. And no.\" Thanatos spoke cryptically.  \n  \nJavier squinted, thinking his memory must be failing him. \"Do I know you?\" he  \nasked the Lord of the Dead.  \n  \nThanatos smiled; a thin dark line. \"You do, you just don't remember it. I have  \nbeen keeping my eye on you for quite some time now, my friend. Helping you when I  \ncan, moving obstacles out of your way. That sort of thing. It's the least I can  \ndo for someone who's been doing my job for me for so long.\"  \n  \n\"What is your job?\" asked Javier warily.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Why, to sweep away the rubbish of death, of course,\" Thanatos tossed off, as if  \nit should have been obvious. \"I suppose I have to explain in greater detail. You  \nare mortals, after all.\" A glance at Max. \"Well, most of you.\"  \n  \nGetting only 'huh?' looks in response, he continued, sounding quite  \nmelodramatically weary of such endless repetition on his part. \"When most people  \ndie, they are whisked away instantly to their final reward, or punishment, as the  \ncase may be. But in certain circumstances some may lag behind. Either because  \nthey are confused, or too scared to go, or have a purpose they feel they must  \nfulfill until they can move on. Or...\" And here he stared directly at Max,  \n\"...sometimes they are \\*brought\\* back.\"  \n  \nMax gulped. This was not sounding good.  \n  \n\"In any case, that is where I come in. I am one part grim reaper, and two parts  \njanitor,\" he groused. \"It is my lot to eternally scrub clean all the messes you  \nmortals manage to make out of the simplest process in the world; dropping dead.  \nYou'd think your kind would have figured such a simple thing out by now. You've  \nhad millions of years to perfect the technique.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier was starting to get it now, peeling back the thick, sticky layers of  \nThanatos' attitude to get to the meaning beneath. \"Then when you say I have been  \ndoing your job for you, you mean... getting rid of the undead?\"  \n  \nThanatos nodded. \"Precisely. There must be balance in nature. Dead and alive must  \nremain separate, or else it all falls apart. What is not supposed to be, I undo.\"  \n  \nTish understood now too. She threw her arms around her brother in a protective  \nhug. \"No! You can't take Max away! I won't let you!!\" she screamed.  \n  \nThe Lord of the dead stared at her, at first startled by her outburst, and then  \namused. And then he leaned down slightly to meet her gaze, and the first trace of  \ncompassion he had showed slipped through in his violet eyes. \"I never said I was  \ngoing to, little one,\" he told her reassuringly.  \n  \nTish let go of Max. \"Oh.\"  \n  \nMax, more than a little glad to be free of her hug (since she'd broken four of  \nhis ribs by accident), looked up at Thanatos. \"I thought that's what you were  \njust telling us?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The foglike feline shook his head. \"How many people do you know of who always do  \ntheir jobs perfectly, 100% of the time?\"  \n  \n\"What?\" said Max.  \n  \nThanatos rolled his eyes. More explanations. Damn, but these dirt-dwellers were  \ndim. \"Just because I'm supposed to cleanse the world of every ghost, ghoulie and  \nzombie such as yourself doesn't mean I always do. Most of the creatures I  \nencounter are dumb and bloodthirsty and do nothing but cause trouble. And in  \nthose cases I deport their creepy bottoms back to the other side quicker than you  \ncan say Jack Robinson,\" he snarled.  \n  \nHis tone became softer then. \"But on some rare occasions, I come across a spirit  \nbeing who is good. Who is not out for revenge or brain-eating. Some wayward  \nspirit who has chosen to stay behind out of love for someone still living.  \n  \n\"Someone like you,\" he said to Max.  \n  \nThe little zombie felt a bit of relief. It finally seemed as if he might get out  \nof this okay.  \n  \n\"In those cases, I commit a bit of dereliction of duty. If they're not harming  \nanyone, or making a big show of being dead, then I'll let them stay. Sometimes  \nwithout even needing to introduce myself to them.\" Now he glanced at Tish,  \nlooking slightly reproachful. \"Sometimes though, I give them a warning.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; She grinned weakly. \"This is about Eddie, right?\"  \n  \nThanatos nodded. \"Yes. Truth be told, I'm all for revenge from beyond the grave.  \nAnd that roly-poly little bastard child deserved it more than many in my opinion.  \nOnly don't you think you could've possibly been a bit more subtle about it!?\"  \n  \nThe two pups looked sheepish. \"Well, it worked, didn't it?\" said Tish.  \n  \n\"And it was funny as hell,\" Max added, grinning.  \n  \nThanatos barely hid a grin of his own. \"Admittedly, yes. That's why this is only  \na warning. So long as you both keep from putting on any more performances like  \nthat, I don't see any reason why you can't stay earthside for as long as you  \nlike,\" he said to Max.  \n  \nThe twins let out two joyful little yips of happiness and hugged again. Max broke  \na few more ribs this time, but barely even noticed.  \n  \nJavier fixed Thanatos with a soft, drilling gaze. \"But there's more, isn't there?  \nSurely you didn't have to wake us from our beds just for that?\"  \n  \nThanatos' face went flat and miffed. \"Yes, well...\" He looked very annoyed, and a  \nkeen observer might notice it was out of embarrassment. Thanatos was not a furson  \nwho was wild about admitting his own errors.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"The train,\" Javier said darkly. \"You sent it, didn't you?\"  \n  \n\"My \\*office\\* sent it!!\" Thanatos snarked loudly and suddenly, his eyes flaring  \ninto a hot magenta sheen. The sheer anger on the cat's face made Javier shut his  \nmouth and both twins look up in shock. It would be wise to keep in mind, they all  \nthought, that this being before them was not at all harmless.  \n  \nThanatos composed himself, and even felt a little badly for such a petty  \noutburst. It was not becoming of such a high-ranking Agent of the Beyond such as  \nhe. \"The train. Yes. That needs some explanation, you're right.\" He reached out a  \npaw and snapped his fingers, twice.  \n  \nImmediately, there was a little \\*poof\\* by his side, and at first it didn't seem  \nlike anything had actually happened. And then just as suddenly, two wide blue  \neyes appeared out of the darkness.  \n  \nIt took a few seconds for all of them to realize that this was not an optical  \nillusion at all, but a young black squirrel whose fur was so dark it made him  \nalmost totally invisible amongst the shadows. Like a tiny black hole come to  \nlife. He was younger than both Tish and Max by a third or so, and yet his eyes  \nheld the same wisdom and experience as Thanatos'. He was also about four feet  \nshorter than his boss.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"He's so \\*cute\\*!!\" Tish could not resist squealing.  \n  \nThe blue eyes rolled in disgust. As if he \\*hadn't\\* heard that a billion and a  \nhalf times before already. Geez...  \n  \nThe Lord of the Dead spoke up, sounding a tad embarrassed as well. \"This is my  \nassistant; Croak.\"  \n  \nMax blinked, then laughed. \"Ha! Thanatos and Croak! I get it!\"  \n  \nTish looked at him, confused. \"Huh?\"  \n  \n\"I'll tell you later,\" he told her.  \n  \n\"Do you have the report?\" Thanatos asked his diminutive sidekick.  \n  \n\"Yessir,\" Croak said in a polite, precise voice. He reached seemingly within  \nhimself and came back with a clipboard full of papers. He handed these to  \nThanatos, having to stand on tiptoes to do it. Afterwards he crossed his arms  \nbehind his back and stood silent and ready to carry out any more orders.  \n  \nThe twins could both see a little flash of pink when Croak opened his mouth.  \nOtherwise, he might have been just another shadow. \"Pleased to meet you,\" Tish  \nsaid to him.  \n  \n\"Thanks,\" he told her softly; silently pleased that an older girl like her  \nthought he was cute.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Thanatos glanced up from the report at the twins. \"You didn't say you were  \npleased to see \\*me\\*,\" he said lowly.  \n  \n\"That's cuz you're really huge and scary,\" Max blurted matter-of-factly before he  \ncould stop himself. Tish instantly stomped on his foot.  \n  \nThe Lord of the Dead tittered. \"Quite right,\" he agreed. He went on perusing the  \npapers Croak had given him and then abruptly handed them back. Croak made them  \ndisappear like a stage magician. Thanatos sighed theatrically. \"Well, it seems as  \nif there's been a little confusion.\"  \n  \n\"You made a mistake,\" Javier said daringly.  \n  \nThanatos glared at him. \"Of course not,\" he sneered. \"That's what mortals do.\"  \n  \nThe big bat shrugged. His instincts were telling him that, as showy as Thanatos  \nwas acting, he couldn't do so much as lay a finger on him here in this material  \nplane. And the overly dramatic reaper was providing more proof of this theory by  \nthe second. \"All I'm saying is, there's an evil train chasing my young friend  \nhere, and I have never heard of such a phenomenon before. Then you show up hours  \nlater and say that Max can stay, and also that you sent the train. It is not hard  \nto put one and one and one together to make three.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Indeed,\" Thanatos grumbled. \"But first off, you must understand that the train  \nis not evil. In different circumstances, you'd find it heroic.\"  \n  \nTish looked unconvinced. She wrinkled her nose and said, \"I smell bullshit.\"  \n  \nCroak chuckled just the tiniest bit and Thanatos gave him a little flick on his  \near. The Lord of the Dead leaned down to glare at Tish. \"You, little girl, have a  \nfilthy mouth. Have you ever tried growing potatoes in there?\"  \n  \nTish was one-upped and she knew it. Max slapped a paw over his mouth to keep in a  \nsnort. \"You'd probably be able to grow a whole truckload!\" he teased.  \n  \n\"Yeah, like you wouldn't,\" she returned, and stuck her tongue out at him.  \n  \nThanatos cleared his throat very loudly. \"AS I WAS SAYING, my office sent the  \ntrain. And by that I mean the network of other Agents Of The Beyond who work  \nunder me. Like Croak here. While I have to go out and do all the dirty work, they  \nget to sit behind their little desks in the Abyss and file reports when things go  \nwrong. And as I have said, I was not the one who made the mistake.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"In the course of a normal day, on average, all over the world, a hundred and  \nsixty ghosts, thirty five zombies, six ghouls and maybe a wasteling or two all  \ncome into existence. And they must \\_all\\_ be dealt with. Of those, only a handful  \nare nonthreatening, and sometimes \\*none\\* of them are. What a great pain in the  \narse THOSE days are, let me tell you...  \n  \n\"The point is that, as the population grows, my ability to do my job efficiently  \ngoes steadily downhill at the very same rate. I can't go out and convince \\*every\\*  \nconfused fool that, yes, now that he's driven his car off a bridge into a gravel  \npit he is, indeed, dead. I can't slay every zombie and wrangle every wrathful  \nspirit. Some of them will always slip through the cracks anyway, which is one of  \nthe reasons why I am grateful to fursons like Mr. Villareal here.\"  \n  \n\"Gracias,\" the big bat said, thankful for the acknowledgement.  \n  \n\"De nada,\" Thanatos replied, and went on with his explanation. \"We do have other  \nmethods at our disposal though. Chief among them is the ability to bewitch. This  \nis a delightfully simple way of getting rid of time-consuming but otherwise  \neasily dealt with beasties, zombies especially, but only when it is done  \nPROPERLY!!!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; All of them shrank back a bit, including Croak.  \n  \nThanatos settled down. \"The method is easy and uncomplicated. We locate whatever  \nobject was most closely tied into that being's death, and then we give it limited  \nsensory capabilities. Not unlike a heat-seeking missile. It is then set loose  \nand, depending on how far away it is from the target, it usually gets the job  \ndone in a few hours. Quick, clean, and I don't have to bother getting my shoes  \ndirty.\"  \n  \n\"But you don't even have feet,\" Max noted.  \n  \nThanatos gave him a withering glance that could curl sheet metal. He didn't even  \nbother dignifying that with a response. \"Anyway, when yet another corpse came  \npopping up out of the ground a few weeks ago, one of my overzealous associates  \nsicced a bewitched object upon it without notifying me first. When I found out,  \nthe fool actually expected me to be \\*proud\\* of him! Barely restraining myself  \nfrom separating his head from his spine, I checked up upon you two and found that  \nyou, Max, were one of the rarest unnatural beings to ever walk the earth; a  \nzombie with a soul. Curious, I kept watch for a few more days and came to the  \nconclusion that you were no danger to anyone else besides fat little mice who  \npick on other children in the supermarket.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Tish and Max giggled.  \n  \n\"So, now we have a problem, as I'm sure your flaming lower extremities this  \nafternoon can attest to.\"  \n  \n\"Can't you just call it off?\" Tish asked. The idea seemed perfectly reasonable to  \nher.  \n  \nThanatos looked as if someone had shoved a lemon in his mouth. \"My dear,\" he said  \nslowly and carefully, \"if I could, then why would I have any need of dragging you  \nand your brother and your large brutish companion out here in the middle of the  \nnight?\"  \n  \n\"Okaaaaay...\" she said.  \n  \n\"You can't just 'call it off'!\" Croak added derisively, and tossed his boss a  \n'what a dunderhead, huh?' look.  \n  \nJavier was frustrated, and let it show. This Lord of the Dead talked too damn  \nmuch and said too damn little. \"So are we now just supposed to wait? Until it  \ncomes and smears Max all over the place like a ripe tomato?\"  \n  \n\"If you would let me finish...\" Thanatos growled with a deep sneer.  \n  \n\"Please do,\" said Javier calmly.  \n  \nMax looked up expectantly. There had to be some hope for him, right?  \n  \n\"Like my apprentice said, there is no calling it off. Its sole purpose is to hunt  \nits prey down and let nothing stand in its way. Once it has accomplished its  \nmission and its prey no longer exists, only then will it cease to exist. And  \nuntil then, the only thing that can even stand in its way momentarily is that it  \ncannot allow itself to be seen by any mortals.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Ohhhhh,\" said Max. \"So that's why it jumped into the ground when it saw the guy  \nin the car!\" he realized.  \n  \nTish frowned, confused. \"So how come me and Javier can see it?\"  \n  \nThanatos opened his mouth, then paused. \"Actually, I'm not sure. You shouldn't  \nthough.\"  \n  \nCroak whipped out an immense leather-bound book that was rotting along the edges  \nand smelled like dead vegetable matter. He whipped it open and scanned it  \ncarefully. \"Aha!\"  \n  \n\"What have you found?\" Thanatos asked.  \n  \nTracing his finger along the page, Croak clued them all in. \"These are the  \n'blueprints' for a bewitching spell, complete with all the cautions. It says that  \noccasionally the object in question may become confused if it 'sees' its target  \nalong with a close blood relative. Since you two are identical twins, you sorta  \ngive off the same 'smell', and that probably means it's experiencing a sort of  \ndouble vision.\"  \n  \nTish made a 'well how bout that' noise.  \n  \n\"As for Mr. Villareal, all I can guess is that you've been killin' monsters so  \nlong, it might think you're one of us. An Agent of the Beyond. That's why it's  \nkeeping away right now: it's also programmed to keep out of our business.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max took a step forward to peek at the book. \"Anything in there about why I can  \nrun so fast?\"  \n  \nCroak 'hmm'ed and flipped some pages. He looked in the zombie section long and  \nhard, but came up empty-handed. \"Nope. Guess it's a result of all that weird ka-  \nka that went into the spell by accident.\"  \n  \nTish flinched. She just \\*knew\\* the extra ingredients must have some sort of side  \neffect. At least it had turned out to be a beneficial one.  \n  \nThanatos looked down with a paternal smile and gave Croak a pat on the head.  \n\"Good job.\"  \n  \nThe little squirrel practically squirmed in delight. It could not have been more  \nobvious how much he loved and admired his mentor.  \n  \nThe Lord of the Dead looked back at Max again. \"I am sorry, young one, but there  \nisn't much I can do for you. I am completely powerless in this realm. I'm little  \nmore than a hologram to you.\"  \n  \nUnable to resist testing that theory, Max put out his paw and it sunk into  \nThanatos' cloak just like steam. \"Whoa!\"  \n  \n\"Don't do that!\" the startled feline snapped. \"It feels extremely strange.\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Max withdrew his paw quickly. \"Sorry.\"  \n  \n\"What can we do,\" Javier asked pointedly, \"to keep Max safe?\"  \n  \nThe Lord of the Dead regarded them all seriously, feeling uncomfortable in his  \npowerlessness. This \\_had\\_ been a mistake, he knew. Just a simple accident. And it  \nwasn't right that it should have to happen to such an innocent little boy. \"For  \nnow, it would be best for Max to stay indoors as much as possible. If you must go  \nout, stay close by areas where there are other people, but try your best not to  \nbe seen yourself. You may want to ask your friend Nick for help. I'm certain the  \ntrain will stay away if he is around.\"  \n  \nMax nodded.  \n  \n\"But that's not fair!\" Tish suddenly exploded, looking as if she were about to  \ncry from frustration. \"What, Max is just supposed to stay in the house forever  \nuntil he rots away to nothing? What about all the meat he needs? How's he sposto  \nget it now?\"  \n  \nThe spectral feline sighed. \"You're right. What's done is done. And it \\_isn't\\_  \nfair. But I promise I would take it back if I could.\"  \n  \nCroak came over to put a comforting paw on Tish's shoulder. She gave him a  \ngrateful smile, and he smiled back.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; \"Isn't there any way to stop it?\" she asked hesitantly. \"I mean, for good?\"  \n  \nThanatos went silent. He stared off into the night for a moment. \"Maybe,\" he said  \nfinally.  \n  \n\"Maybe?!\" Tish snapped.  \n  \n\"Maybe,\" Thanatos repeated firmly. \"But it will be dangerous.\"  \n  \n\"I know all about danger,\" Javier said softly, a gleam in his eye.  \n  \nThanatos said \"Hmmm.\" He considered the idea. With Javier at their side, the  \nchildren might have a chance. A fairly good chance actually. Finally, he  \nrelented. \"Allright. It may be possible. But you would have to destroy it  \nutterly, using any and all means at your disposal. Utterly! Completely.! So that  \nit could never, ever rise again!\"  \n  \n\"Okay,\" said Javier, as if it were nothing.  \n  \n\"Okay?! I don't think you fully comprehend what you are dealing with here. Most  \nbewitched objects are a knife or a gun or a rope or something like that.  \nSometimes even a car. But a \\_train\\_! Faster than you could ever fly, weighing  \nseveral tons, and hellbent on destroying this young man here with absolutely no  \nthought as to its own safety!\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; Javier nodded. \"Okay,\" he said again.  \n  \nMildly flabbergasted, Thanatos shut his mouth. But then he grinned darkly. \"Fine.  \nYou will see. But if you attempt such a foolhardy task, you must prepare  \nyourself. You must outthink it, which will be harder than you could ever imagine.  \nIt is without thought, yes, but it possesses the cunning of a feral predator.\"  \n  \nJavier was tempted to just say 'okay' again, but thought he was toying with  \nThanatos' last nerve enough. \"I will try my best.\" He clapped the twins on their  \nshoulders. \"Are you up to the challenge as well?\"  \n  \n\"Hell yeah,\" said Max.  \n  \n\"I'd do anything to get that goddam hunk of junk to leave my brother alone,\" Tish  \nhuffed, more to Thanatos than Javier.  \n  \nThe Lord of the Dead sighed gravely, hoping for the best, but inwardly worried  \nthat he would soon have to come and collect all of their souls. \"Then I will  \nleave you now. You had best run for the house, as the train will undoubtedly  \nlunge as soon as I am gone. Croak, perhaps you should stay behind for a bit to  \nmake sure they get back safely?\"  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; The squirrelboy nodded smartly, accepting his task. \"Yessir!\"  \n  \n\"Good boy,\" he praised his young acolyte. He looked back at the three dirt-  \ndwellers. \"I will be watching. And I will give you what assistance I can. But I  \nhave duties elsewhere, and so I must go.\" With that, his form began to shimmer,  \nand then break apart, like evaporating steam.  \n  \n\"Goodbye,\" Max said softly, and so did Tish.  \n  \n\"Oh, and by the way...\" came Thanatos' rapidly fading voice, \"I met a nonev  \nsquirrel on the way here who wanted me to tell you something, Tish...\"  \n  \n\"What?\" she asked, a little confused.  \n  \nThe words were just barely audible; \"'Yeah, whatever'...\"  \n  \nThe little coyote was so startled she took a step backwards. \"Whoa!\"  \n  \n\"What's that mean?\" Max asked.  \n  \n\"I'll tell you later.\"  \n  \nSoon, the Lord of the Dead was gone, leaving behind those two alert little blue  \neyes.  \n  \n\"Go on now,\" said Croak. \"I don't think the train'll fear me nearly as much as my  \nboss.\"  \n  \n\"Yes,\" said Javier. \"And it is well past your bedtime anyway,\" he told the  \nchildren, placing his wings protectively around them.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; As they turned to go, they heard Croak's small voice call out to them, \"Good  \nluck!\"  \n  \nHastily, they ran to the house, not looking back.  \n  \nWhen he heard the door shut and lock behind the trio, a weight lifted from  \nCroak's heart.  \n  \nHe turned around, an unseen scowl forming on his dark-furred face. \"They're gone  \nnow, you big jerk.\"  \n  \nThe train was directly behind him, growling hungrily. It trundled closer,  \nscenting the air, unsure of why this small, insignificant being seemed to fill it  \nwith a need to stay away from the one it hunted.  \n  \nThe little squirrel was no bigger than one of the immense engine's wheels, but  \nstill he stood his ground. \"Shoo! You can't hurt me anyway.\"  \n  \nGrudgingly, the train rolled away back into the trees, feeling cheated.  \n  \nSmiling in a 'that's that' kind of way, Croak allowed himself to vanish.  \n  \n  \n~\\*\\*\\*~  \n  \n  \nEND OF BOOK THREE  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Summer Vacation Of The Living Dead","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/8407-summer-vacation-of-the-living-dead-book-2.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/8409-summer-vacation-of-the-living-dead-book-4.json"}}