Chapter 12: The Grave

Owen drove his Oldsmobile west. Abby lay buried in a sleeping bag in the back seat. She made no sound. She did not appear to be breathing. Owen had no idea if her four wounds would heal or not. He had long since cried himself out, however. He concentrated on the road. It was 1:13 AM, August 3, 1984.

Alvirez had really blown it. That much Owen understood. Abby's secret had gotten out and some stranger had forced Abby to bite her. Owen wondered how long the vampiric transformation took, if the unknown woman was already running amok in Maryland. He wondered if she would know to stay out of the sun. He wondered if she would bite the man who had come with her and turn him into a vampire also.

He and Abby had trusted Alvirez. Things had been going so well. Murderless blood for over four months, without the torments of the Brooklyn ghetto. Going on dates all the time – movies and shopping and Shakespeare and the Kennedy Center. Just last night they had gone and seen Cyrano de Bergerac. Abby had absolutely adored the performance. Already it seemed like another life.

And the schooling! What was Owen going to do without his tutor? Without Alvirez? Although the agent certainly hadn't been smart enough to prevent this disaster. He had seen it coming, of course; Owen realized that now. But the man should have done something to keep it from happening. Owen wondered if Alvirez was alive or dead. He wondered if he cared.

Owen crossed into Indiana and heard a rustling from the back seat. Fresh tears burst from his eyes. Abby was alive! He knew she would heal! Four bullets couldn't kill a vampire. She was made of tougher stuff.

He exited the highway quickly and found a back road. It had only been six days since Abby had last eaten, but Owen reckoned it wouldn't matter. Abby would wake up confused and hungry and thoroughly pissed. He parked in some woods, opened both passenger doors, and backed away from the vehicle a good twenty yards.

When Abby surged from the car she was all monster. She growled at Owen and took to the air. Owen watched her disappear. Then he rooted for supplies, found bottles of water and fresh clothes. Abby returned a couple of hours later. Owen gave her some space to clean up as best she could. He let her take the initiative in approaching him.

They embraced for a long time, Owen desperately grateful that she was still in this world, still a part of his life. "I'm so sorry I didn't watch over you better," Owen apologized.

"None of that," Abby said. "You love me. That's all that matters."

They returned to the Oldsmobile and got back on the highway, Abby laying on the passenger seat with her feet in Owen's lap. Such precious, adorable feet. How amazingly wonderful that Abby was alive. Owen kept staring at her. He smiled, he laughed, he cried. Such a remarkable effect Abby could work upon him. She made him so happy!


Three nights later found them camping in an empty track of Montana wasteland. Abby showed Owen the proper way to hold a revolver, but she didn't seem very interested in watching him practice. Owen discovered that he was actually pretty good with the .357, certainly better than he was with the 12-gauge. He still missed his shotgun, though. Like so many things it had been left behind in Bethesda.

They had managed to obtain several newspapers, and the articles did not disappoint. Apparently Owen Wheeler had shot FBI Agent Charles Alvirez and left him for dead. The boy had even tried to burn the house down around the wounded man. Alvirez had managed to crawl from the building before it had collapsed in flames. The tough old bastard was now recovering in a Montgomery County hospital.

And that wasn't all. The papers claimed that Abby had attacked victims in Indiana and Maryland – on the same night. Owen knew about Indiana. He assumed the Maryland assault had to be the woman Abby had bitten. The new vampire had killed a medical researcher named Stanley DeRose. She had ripped him to pieces, actually. Owen felt badly about the increased body count, but he hoped having another vampire on the rampage would at least distract the FBI's attention.

Owen wished Alvirez would call on the satellite phone. He had so many unanswered questions. He wanted the man's advice. The agent had left a thick stack of photocopies in the van. The packet included subjects the two of them had already studied together – conversation techniques, psychological disorders, Maslow's Hierarchy. But there was lots of other stuff the agent had never taught him. Owen assumed this was material Alvirez had been planning on getting to. He wanted the agent to go over it with him.

Owen turned on their small radio and found a show highlighting chick rockers. He settled beside the fire and tried to make conversation. "Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, Ann and Nancy Heart. These are women you could really get in touch with," he teased. Abby did not reply. She had been withdrawn and depressed since the events in Maryland. Owen didn't know what to do for her.

Abby had eaten just a few days ago, so whatever the reason for her mood, it wasn't hunger. Had she enjoyed living in Bethesda, and now felt disappointed at the experiment's failure? Did the return to killing for food discourage her? Did she miss all the stuff they had lost? Did she miss going to the movies? Owen wanted to broach these subjects without pestering Abby with questions, but he felt dull, uncreative. He wished Alvirez would call.

"I understand this topic might make you uncomfortable," Owen eventually said, "and I'm sorry I have to bring it up. Alvirez made it clear that the key to not getting caught is hiding the bodies. He put a shovel and a pick-axe in the trunk. He told me to dig a grave six feet deep. He also provided a list of people we should consider hunting. One of them lives in Eastern Montana. I think we should go there tonight and scope out his house."

Abby had nothing to say to this, but she joined Owen for the 45-minute trip. It was a thoroughly unpleasant drive. Abby brooded in the back seat, distant and sullen. Owen felt uncomfortable and guilty about planning the act of murder. It didn't matter that the guy was scum. Owen didn't want to kill people. And as he had learned from his legal studies, there was a world of difference between killing someone in the heat of the moment and killing someone with premeditation. This drive to Broadus, Montana was the very definition of premeditation.

It was 2:30 in the morning when they finally found the man's house and drove past it. There were no other homes nearby; Abby could attack and feed with little risk of getting caught. "Alvirez said you should feed outside in the rain," Owen explained. "I'm assuming you can draw the guy into the backyard and eat on the grass. Then I would drive up. We would load the body into the trunk and drive it to the grave. Which we'll have to dig in advance."

Owen could tell this conversation was getting him nowhere, but what could he do? His involvement in the hunt was necessary if the bodies were going to be hidden. The nights of just letting Abby fly off and kill at random had to end. And they had to end now.

About a mile from the house, Owen found an overgrown field behind a copse of trees. They got out and scoped the sight. "This will make a good spot for the grave," he commented. He grabbed the tools from the car and started digging. Abby refused to have anything to do with the task, choosing instead to sulk in the car.

Owen used a lantern, but the job was still hard to perform in the dark. Breaking up the dirt proved a lot harder than Owen thought it would. He shoveled soil for two hours, till his hands were blistered and his back cramped in knots. When he stopped for the night he was amazed at how little he had accomplished. Six feet meant even deeper than Owen was tall. That would take days of labor. No wonder murderers didn't hide their victims!

They headed back to their campsite. Owen's hands and clothes were filthy, but that wasn't what made him unclean. He was planning a murder. He was working at the disposal of the victim's body. Letting Abby fly off and hunt alone, never thinking too hard about what she was really doing, pretending between kills that they were just another happy couple – it was so much easier than joining Abby in the evil task. It didn't matter than she needed to eat. It didn't matter than her next meal was a loser. Owen didn't want to hurt people.


Four days later Alvirez called at 12:00 noon, Montana time. Owen marveled at how glad he was to hear the man's voice. He got right to the point. "What happened?" Owen demanded.

"I wouldn't kill a man who needed killing," Alvirez answered. "Of all the crazy times to discover I still have a conscience. Who would've thought?"

"Who were they?" Owen asked, longing for details.

"Stan and Lucy DeRose," Alvirez said. "Stan was a member of the Society. From what I've been able to figure out, Lucy was dying from some rare disease. Stan did it to try and save her. He didn't understand what he was getting himself into, though. He was the first person Lucy ate."

"She's hunting in Maryland," Owen commented.

"She's a loose cannon," Alvirez informed him. "She's wild, out of control. The media are still saying it's Abby. The forensics don't match up, though. The idea of Abby's Gang is back in vogue. It's certainly giving you cover. Everyone thinks you're here, despite the kill in Indiana. Do things right and you'll definitely have a good shot at avoiding detection."

"I'm digging a grave now. I go out every night and work on it. Abby won't help. She won't even come with me. It's really frustrating. She's so strong. It would go so fast. She refuses to talk. She's really depressed."

"I wonder if she feels responsible for Lucy's carnage," Alvirez mused. "She always breaks the necks of her victims. I don't remember if I ever told you that. So she must know they'll turn into vampires if she doesn't. That makes me think there's some bad history there. How else could she know what her victims would turn into?"

"I don't know," Owen demurred. "Maybe that's part of it. She's certainly unhappy about this burial, though. I've seen her distant, of course. But not like this."

"Maybe she doesn't like to think about her kills before or after," Alvirez suggested. "Maybe it's a defense mechanism to insulate herself from the guilt. Which is actually pretty remarkable when you think about it. She's been doing this for over two hundred years, and she still feels guilty? Most people would have long since stopped feeling anything at all."

"We don't know what she's feeling," Owen countered.

"Good point. Maybe this is your chance to finally figure out why she doesn't hide the bodies. She's not a stupid girl, you know. She has to realize the advantages of concealing her kills. Whatever her reasons for leaving her victims in place, they must be compelling."

Owen paused for a moment. "I don't like digging the grave," he admitted.

"Not so easy, is it?" the agent said. "The movies make it look mundane, this ending of a human life. They don't show the aftermath. At least not what happens to real people after they murder real people. There are a few conscienceless individuals out there, of course. But from watching TV you'd think that was almost everybody."

"I can't stop thinking about it," Owen said. "I picked him. I picked the person she's going to eat. I'm going to drive her there. I'm going to bury the body afterwards. Sometimes it makes me so sick I feel like throwing up."

"This is the life you chose, Owen. The life of aiding and abetting a mass-murderer. It was easier in North Carolina, was it? You didn't have to get your hands dirty. You were still aiding and abetting, though. You played a role in every murder she committed down there."

Owen sighed. "I think I'm starting to understand Macbeth," he said. "I wish I'd never read it."

"Abby's previous caretaker, Thomas. You saw him a couple of times. Did he seem like a particularly happy individual?"

"No," Owen admitted, wincing.

"I've seen three things happen to men who start killing," the agent offered. "A few fall in love with it. They come to enjoy slaying. They even look forward to it. These individuals are very rare. The second group becomes increasingly overwhelmed with guilt and remorse. At some point they simply break down. They become incapable of further action of any kind. The third group just grows numb. They die internally, and therefore they're able to go on killing. There's nothing left inside them to upset, you see. Robots can do a lot of killing."

"Which are you?" Owen challenged.

"I died a long time ago, Owen. That's why Stan couldn't kill me. You can't kill a dead man."

"I was afraid you had died," Owen confessed.

"Don't you know what the Bible says?" Alvirez asked. "There is no peace for the wicked."


Rain arrived in Montana. It was only ten days since Abby's last meal, but Owen knew it was time. They loaded their gear into the Oldsmobile and broke camp. Then they went hunting.

Owen stopped near Broadus about a half mile from the target's house. Abby got out and vanished, leaving Owen to wait. It was a very unpleasant experience. Between the rain and the dark, Owen could essentially see nothing. It was totally the wrong time to turn on music. He sat behind the wheel and tried not to think about what Abby was doing.

She would use her youthfulness and quiet voice to put the man at ease. Then she would say something to get him to go outside. Or maybe she'd just stand there in the rain, silent, till the man's curiosity got the better of him and he stepped through his doorway. The guy could scream all he wanted; no one was close enough to hear. Abby would drink most of his blood, of course. What few drops escaped her thirst would quickly wash away.

The grave was six feet deep. Owen had been forced to stand in it. He had even dug steps for getting in and out. Working in its depths had been horrible. At least he wouldn't have to go down inside it again. But he'd have to go back there. He'd have to load the body into the trunk, drive it to the grave, carry it to the edge, and roll it in. Then he would have to shovel the dirt back into the hole and disguise the fresh dirt with sticks and leaves. It would take most of the night. It would be awful work, the labor of hell.

Owen squeezed the steering wheel and shook his head. How had this happened? How had he become a murderer? He didn't want to hurt people. That wasn't why he had run off with Abby. That wasn't why he was with her now. He loved Abby. She was the first thing he thought of when he woke up and the last thing he thought of when he fell asleep. She was everything to him.

But he hated what she did. He hated that she killed people. He accepted Abby, of course, despite all she did. He knew that was one reason she loved him. He despised the brute facts of her existence nevertheless. Right now she was ending human life, draining a man's blood in a few moments of parting terror. Abby lurked above the food chain, a predator of shadows, an unquenchable monster, a vampire.

A knock sounded on the passenger window, scaring Owen so badly he yelled. Abby got in. The rain had washed her face and hands clean, but her shirt was stained red. She glanced at Owen, looked away. Owen started the car. He put his hand on the gear shift.

The victim's body was waiting for him. It had to be buried. The only alternative was getting tracked and captured. Right now the police thought they were in Maryland. If they left this kill out to be discovered, the search would move west. They'd lose the precious opportunity being given them by Lucy. They had to bury the body.

But could Owen drive to that house, the house of the man he had selected for death? Could he gaze into his dead eyes? Could he touch him and carry him and roll him and cast dirt upon him? Owen didn't want to have anything to do with him. He wanted to flee. And he wanted to flee now.

"I can't do it," he stated. "I'm sorry." He faced Abby, afraid of discovering a look of disappointment or scorn. But her expression was soft, understanding. She gave him a sad smile and touched his hand gently.

"It's OK," she said. Then she added, "We have to go away. Let's just go."

Owen put the Oldsmobile in gear and headed for the highway. They needed to get out of Montana. South Dakota was the logical choice, but where to go from there? Owen had no idea. He didn't know anything. He was a weak, stupid failure. He had put them both at risk. He had let Abby down.

"Owen, why do you love me?" Abby asked.

Good grief, Owen thought. No wonder she doesn't like it when I ask questions! How was he supposed to respond to such a query? And at such a horrible time? He knew he had to say something, though.

"The night in my apartment," Owen said. "When I said you can come in. Your bleeding stopped and I hugged you. You were happy, but there was more. I felt like you were feeling something better than happiness. And I felt like I was the cause. It was the best moment of my life."

Owen was afraid this would sound ridiculously lame, but Abby appeared pleased, satisfied.

"You get this special look on your face sometimes," Owen continued. "You've got a fun look, a happy look, and…and a love look. But this is something else. It doesn't happen a lot, but it's wonderful when it does. I don't know what to call it, so I just call it the 'beyond happy look.' I love seeing it. I love you so much. I'd do anything to make you have the beyond happy look. It makes me feel strong and successful, like I'm doing everything right."

Abby snuggled against him and put her hands on Owen's leg. He remembered how Alvirez had described this: Positive Body Language (PBL). Owen really liked PBL.

"So many times I've felt weak," Owen said. "When my parents separated, when Kenny would bully me, when Bobby would beat me up. I felt weak when the Russians broke into our room in Brighton, when Stan and Lucy broke into our house in Bethesda. Now I feel weak again. I can't even bury a body."

Abby put a hand on Owen's cheek. "Am I weak?" she asked. "When I'm full I feel so dirty, so ashamed, so empty. All I want to do is run and hide and forget what I am, what I've done. You're not weak, Owen. You're human. I want you to be human."

"You said you like it when the man gives up something for the girl. I don't feel like I've done that for you. I needed to give something up for you tonight. I let you down."

She pressed against him. "I didn't mean I wanted you to give up being you. I don't want you to change. I don't want you to be me. I don't want you to be Thomas."

This comment surprised Owen so completely that he turned and stared at Abby, forgetting about his driving. Abby pointed out the window and smiled.

"Right," Owen said, fixing his attention on the road. "You know, I feel pretty much entirely to blame for the need to hide the bodies. You've been able to avoid the police your whole life. It's because you keep rescuing me that they're all after you now. So the situation we're in is sort of my mess. I should clean it up. If I don't, we're just going to end up with a repeat. Someone's going to break in on us."

"So we keep moving," Abby said. "It's the best way."

"Maybe. But before you were with me, you didn't have to keep moving, did you?"

"We're together. That's all that matters. I'm just so glad that we're together."

Owen observed the dramatic improvement in Abby's mood. She was far more cheerful than at any point since they had fled Maryland. Owen had no choice but to conclude that the whole matter of the burial had been weighing on her even more heavily than on him. Clearly him trying to be involved in the hunt did not make her feel loved. Trying to bury the body did not make her feel loved. He was trying to do things that Abby didn't want him to do.

"I felt so weak in juvie," he recalled. "I wanted to be a vampire so I could defend myself and be strong and not have to depend on you. But then later I was glad I wasn't a vampire. It forced me to use my brain and think of a plan. I wasn't strong, so I had to be clever.

"Sometimes I still want you to change me. Sometimes I don't. When I do it's no longer because I feel weak. It's because I think I could love you better if I was like you. But you're saying that's not the case. You're saying I can love you better if I'm human."

"You make me feel like a person," Abby said. "Like a girl. With you I can pretend I'm alive. I can be happy. I can forget. You've no idea how much that means to me. When we go to the movies, work on your homework, spoon in bed, I feel…like I can see the sun. Like I can have babies. Like I have a reason to wake up. You just have no idea what you do for me.

"I don't want you to be interested in me because of what I am," Abby continued. "I want you to like me. You were interested in me before you ever knew. If I was just me, just a girl, would I still be special to you? Would you still be interested? That's what you can give up for me, Owen. Give up your interest in the bad part. Focus on me. Love me. Don't think about the rest."

Owen nodded, grateful that Abby was communicating so much. She laid her head in his lap and closed her eyes. Owen stroked her hair with his right hand. She certainly seemed happy now.

He tried to process what Abby had just shared with him. If he understood rightly, she was saying she preferred how they did things in North Carolina. Abby fed when hungry. But they didn't talk about it, didn't focus on it. Time and energy weren't expended obtaining murderless blood or digging graves for victims. Better simply to pretend to be normal.

Owen considered his history with Abby. She had never asked him to obtain blood, or define a hunting range, or bury corpses. All of this he had pulled down upon himself. Should he give up? Should he just enjoy the moment like Abby wanted, and not think about the "bad part?" He understood the temptation of such an approach, but it would provide no actual solution for Abby's underlying sadness. She was asking for a band-aid. Owen wanted a cure.

Abby sought to hide in a fantasy, interacting with the real world only when hunger dictated. She wished for Owen to ignore these interactions with the real world and spend all his energy maintaining the fantasy. Owen didn't know if Abby possessed multiple personalities, but she certainly desired multiple lives: one life hunting, another life pretending. It was an unrealistic vision. She could get away with it in the 1700's and 1800's. In the modern age it was impossible.

Why had Thomas decided to kill for Abby? Certainly she had let him. But what had she really wanted? Maybe Thomas had gone against her wishes because she was a child. Because her fantasy had become untenable. Maybe Thomas had been the adult, refusing to indulge her. And if so, what did Owen have to look forward to? He would become the adult, while Abby remained a child.

Owen had never articulated his desire to heal Abby's depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, whatever the hell it was. He realized now that Abby was not unaware of her need in this area. She even had a strategy in place for dealing with it: denial, fantasy, avoidance, escape, ignoring the problem as much as possible, pretending it wasn't there. From what Owen had read it was hardly a new strategy. But it was one destined for failure.

They had radically different desires. He wanted to deal with the vampire issues; Abby wanted to contain them, lock them away. All his efforts, then, were at cross-purposes to her wishes. His labors in Brooklyn had not helped, for the simple reason that they drew attention to the very thing Abby was trying so hard to ignore. North Carolina really was most like what she wanted. There was no future in that path, though. Things could never get better.

Owen wondered if Abby had ever wanted more, desired more. He wondered if escapism was simply her last refuge after all other avenues had been exhausted. He feared that was all their relationship was to her, a means of escape into an alternate reality. Were her happiest times with him so happy simply because she succeeded in forgetting? Was Owen anything more to her than a giant distraction?

It occurred to Owen that Abby and the monster were alike in several respects. Neither thought long-term, both aimed for nothing beyond survival (the monster, bodily survival and Abby, emotional survival), and neither realized that what had worked in the past could no longer work in the future.

Abby and the monster - Abby certainly brought all the brains to that party. If the monster understood how important it was to bury the bodies, it would compel Abby to do so. This made Owen wonder if Abby was withholding this insight from the creature. Perhaps she was hindering it, refusing to help. Perhaps in leaving the bodies Abby was showing she didn't agree with what the monster did. She did not affirm its actions or willingly assist it.

Maybe there was a lot she did that the monster didn't like: leaving the bodies, connecting with Owen, going out in public, perhaps even refusing to turn Owen. Were these all subtle ways of fighting back, expressing displeasure, exerting independence, saying she was still her own person? Maybe she was declaring that she wasn't going to give the monster any more than she had to. Owen wasn't the only person in this vehicle who found the monster despicable.

It was the sort of question Owen could never ask, of course. For now it was enough to know that Abby wanted two rigidly compartmented lives: the vampire life in which she would hunt on her own, and the human life in which she would have a relationship. She wanted Owen to be part of the latter, but not the former. She wanted Owen to accept this.

Owen had no intention of accepting it, of course, but was it possible for him to do a little pretending of his own? Did his plan to restore Abby actually require her participation or cooperation in any way? He could make sure she had fun, and was happy, and felt loved, all while supposedly ignoring her vampiric activities. After five hundred or a thousand years she would find herself improving, and then Owen could make her aware of what he was doing.

But those years could only come from Owen being turned, and Abby was saying yet again that she had no intention of making Owen a vampire. The plan also required the obtaining of murderless blood, which involved Owen in Abby's "vampire life" whether she liked it or not. What could he do about that, though? If she was ever going to get better, she simply had to stop killing people.

It was amazing how every argument, every train of thought, always came back to the core issue: obtaining murderless blood. It was enough to make Owen beat his head against a wall. Why did people want to hold on to their blood so badly? Why couldn't he just set up a stand offering $100 per pint, get his twelve units, and feed Abby? No fuss, everyone a willing participant, no one dead.

He needed a place with no police. Practically speaking, Abby had probably lived in such a place most of her life. Thomas might have been the first of Abby's caretakers to deal with a modern police investigation. Owen wished he knew Thomas' history and thoughts and motivations. He needed advice. He needed ideas. There was so much he didn't know.

He knew one thing, though. If the killing continued, he and Abby were driving down a dead end road. Owen had no idea how to get off.