Somewhere Near Concordia Parish Airport
In the Sky, Somewhere Near Concordia Parish Airport: Part 1
There’s nothing out the window, though I look again, for like the thousandth time. Too low for streetlights, not that there’s many here. There’s stars above, I suppose, but I can’t see them. Clouds maybe, or the plane’s banking again
You know, ordinarily only cocaine smugglers bother to make arrangements like this. Too expensive otherwise. Too many empty hands to be filled in exchange for blind eyes; FAA likely, all the way down to paying the guys at the airport to make an early night of it and flip off the lights. It takes a weird mix of chemically fueled paranoia to pay this much, for such crappy conditions, under ordinary conditions.
The plane hits another pocket and jumped downward shortly followed by my stomach. Are vamps even supposed to get airsick?
The smell ain’t helping. A weird mix: Cigarettes, aged vinyl, rancid machine oil, and tired iron. Those were familiar, almost comforting, like old subway cars. But the undertone, a reek of illicitness: drugs, blood and fear was keeping my teeth on edge and bilge in my throat. A lot of bad things happened in this plane. I was probably the most legit cargo they’ve had in a decade. I could look more deeply, reach out and get specifics, but it really isn’t something I want to do on an already swirly stomach. There’s probably a ghost or two, and they’re probably none too happy about stuff I really don’t want to know about. Focus on the window. Focus on the plane. It can’t be too much longer.
I am certain that things could and will get worse, but at the moment I’m having difficulty putting a finger on precisely how.
“Oh yeah,” I muttered to himself. “Augie.” The continued ability to pretend to breathe certainly was preferably to the alternative.
Poor Augie. Not sure what really happened to him. Doubtless “thrown under the bus” after that fuck-up out in the desert. How was I supposed to know that it wasn’t one of those Capadocean vamps? He was hella old, like a Cap. Had freakish death powers, like a Cap, and was protecting one of those Anti-andouille vamps that everyone is just hoping don’t ever wake up again, just like a Cap would.
I certainly didn’t call in those Leopold clowns. I just kept my head down and tried to help when I could, but when you got Ancient vamps fighting younger vamps fighting real zombies, fake zombies, Gio Thugs, banker thugs, and a plane load of vamp hunters, well eggs get broken and feelings get hurt. We did what we could and hell, they even got that vamp, whatever it was, as a prize, sorta.
But even with all that, I thought me and the Gio’s were copacetic. I was working with Augie, (who the hell names their kid Augustino?) and he was teaching me some of their mojo. It was actually pretty similar to stuff I could already do, so not much of a stretch, but useful stuff. I figured, ‘What the heck, it’s California everyone’s just laid back’
A month later I get word Augie’s head’s adorning a spear next to the local Giovanni muckety-mucks, desk (What’s he called? Octavio? Bellasario? Hell, they all sound like something from a Shakespeare play) and that they were after my hide. I don’t know why and I’m disinclined to ask, ‘cause these are kill first and explain never sorts of guys. So I burn the last of my favors with Chase and her banker bosses to get a route to a bolt-hole. The word is that the local vamps in the middle of nowhere Mississippi need information of a sort that I can provide and are willing (or have been duped, doesn’t make a difference) into keeping me under wraps if I provide it.
Two nights and a half dozen plane hops later and I’m in this damned (perhaps literally) DC3. The outside’s nice enough in a ‘Golden Age of Aviation’ sorta way but the inside looks like it was last cleaned during World War 2.
According to the brochure, or the unnamed voice on the phone anyway, the plane and the pilots were paid to not be curious and my incuriousness was expected as a condition of their use. So, none of my usual hocus pocus. They’re paid to take off and land a bunch of times and not to even check if someone got on or off.
Everybody gets what they want and no questions are asked. Life (or unlife) is just better that way, I suppose.
When we finally get to the airport they do an overflight and bankaround that slams me against the side of the plane. I get to see the airport though; tiny, dark, only two planes on the ground, one of which ain’t leaving anytime soon unless it’s in a dumpster, and no cars.
The plane lands hard and rolls to a quick stop. The engines stay on and no one leaves the cockpit. I’ve got exactly two minutes to bail before they u-turn the plane and take off again.
I grab my stuff. All my worldly possessions crammed into two gym bags and a 6pack cooler with 3 pints of blood left in it. Clothes, a couple of books, some tchotchkes and two dozen pre-paid cell phones.
I got other stuff of course, but that is currently in a shell game of warehouses and trucks that will eventually end with a U-STORE-IT in some town in Louisiana about a month from now.
I run down to the rear door and force the thing open. It wants to be jammed, but being a vamp allows for a certain level of not taking ‘no’ for an answer on doors and jars and such like. Which is kind of a perk, most days.
They’re already gunning the engine as I get out onto the runway. Feels like it’s 90 degrees out here and I ain’t walking so much as swimming. At least it’s quiet once the plane leaves.
There was something odd, though about the airport before we landed. . .
No Car.
Damn it. Middle of the night, Ten miles of backwoods Louisiana from the damned hotel and no flipping car. Chase’s travel agent had promised the there’d be a limo, or a Yugo or something out here to pick me up precisely at 2:30 when the plane landed.
Great.
Well, there’s gotta be a farm or something around here I can hotwire.
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