CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

FORTY EIGHT
Soon after our meeting I was airborne, headed
toward the Hudson. A few minutes later I saw the
bright lights of a Wal Mart in East Stroudsburg,
Pennsylvania and landed in the parking lot.
I spotted a large Winnebago in the far corner.
Its engine was idling and it was parked so that the
middle door was on the opposite side of the vehicle
from the store. Perfect. Anybody who stays overnight
in a Wal Mart parking lot in an RV is fair game in my
book.

A yellow light was blinking atop the security
guard’s car as it slowly cruised in front of the store,
some two hundred yards away. I scanned the light
poles for CCTV cameras. Only the front half of the
parking lot was under surveillance. I was at the door
of the RV in an instant. I looked around as I grabbed
the door handle. No one else was nearby and no cars
were parked near the Winnebago.
Across America, retired people have taken
to the roads in these “land yachts”. They travel the
country seeing the sights and have become their own
subculture. Couples run into each other again and
again, often agreeing to rendezvous here or there on
such and such a date. Their rolling homes are well stocked
and outfitted for maximum personalized comfort.
Wal Mart parking lots provide excellent and free of charge overnight accommodations for these elderly wayfarers of the interstate highway system on those nights when they are between destinations. They forego their showers and wash up in the restrooms of the store. On cool evenings such as tonight was, they leave their engines idling and keep the windows open until such time as they decide to turn in for the evening. This allows them to watch a DVD or television, if there’s a small satellite TV dish atop the vehicle, as there was on this one, without running down the battery. The Wal Mart security guards might check on them once during the evening, knocking on the door and finding the Winnebago’s occupants in possession of a store receipt. Some nights there may be as many as three or four of these camper vehicles parked until morning. Here, this night, there was only one.
With my hand on the door, I listened. Inside a man and a woman were watching a sit com. It was a classic set up. I gave the handle a yank downward and broke the lock, opened the door and entered. The TV was loud enough to cover the noise of my entrance but the man sensed something.
“Hello,” I said as he turned my way.
I closed the door behind me.
“Who the hell are you?”
I gave him time to go for his gun – they all have pistols with them. His wife turned and gasped. Charlie Sheen was on screen in the background, with a laugh track to help viewers get into the spirit of the show.
“Turn off the television, please,” I said.
“Ben, do something.”
Ben was opening a wood veneer drawer.It was right next to his seat and he did not even need to rise to reach it. Convenient. As he came out with the pistol, a Smith and Wesson .38 police special, I stretched my arm the ten or so feet between us, grabbed his hand and snapped his wrist, catching the revolver as it fell from his grip. His hand dangled uselessly. His eyes went wide in shock. He groaned. I cuffed him across the jaw before he could start to scream from pain. Then I moved the rest of my body to catch up to my hand.
Meanwhile, the wife was opening a drawer on her side of the vehicle. She came out with a shiny silver .25 automatic – an honest to goodness Saturday night special. I shoved the .38 in her ear.
“I don’t think so, lady.”
“What are you? Who are you?”
I relieved her of her pistol and shoved it in my waistband.
“Just tell me where you hide the cash and nobody gets hurt.”
I elasticized my free arm again and reached around the Winnebago, drawing the yellow curtains over the windows, turning off the lights and then the still-squawking television. The privacy curtain between the two front seats and everything else was already across the width of the vehicle. I brought my arm back to its normal proportion and position.
“We don’t have much,” she said.
“Oh please. Do you think I’m stupid? The cash and the gold coins. Get them now or I’ll blow your brains out and rip this place apart to find it.”
“Ben’s got a money belt. That’s all there is.”
I grabbed hold of her by the hair, pulled her head back and sank my fangs into her carotid artery and fed until she was three fourths empty. I did the same with her husband. I healed the fang marks on both their throats with a little spittle.
I removed the money belt from around the man’s waist. It had ten gold Rand and a thousand in Franklins within the leather folds. I was certain there was more somewhere in the vehicle. Using a cushion from one of the built in seats to muffle the report of the .25 automatic, I popped a cap in the woman’s forehead, then another in the man’s ear. As I expected, the low caliber bullets bounced around inside their skulls without producing an exit wound and making mush of both their brains in the process. I like the way people make things easy for me sometimes. And now I had the .38 -- another clean gun -- to use elsewhere on another night time blood raid.
I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes tearing apart the interior, avoiding stepping in the small pools of blood from their wounds as I maneuvered around the bodies. I wanted this to look like a robbery.
Lo and behold, I found another stash of gold and hundred dollar bills. There were thirty five coins in a white plastic tube and forty more of the bank notes. It was under a crude false bottom in the canned foods cupboard.
I cleaned out the cash from the wallet in her purse and stripped the rings off both their fingers. I looked for his wallet and after a few minutes found his driver’s license slipped under an elastic belt on the backside of the visor over the steering wheel. His credit cards were in a leather holder in the glove box, along with the registration and the Triple A gold card. I quickly shoved all the identification and plastic into her purse.
I realized he did not use a wallet. This was a wise decision, as the bulging presence of a rear pocket billfold has been known to cause back problems. I put the plastic that comprised their identity all together in the woman’s purse without bothering to read it. It all took me less than ten minutes from feeding to finish.
I turned off the engine. With my pockets bulging with loot, the .38 in hand, and the woman’s purse tucked under my elbow, I opened the door to see the store security car approaching at about five miles per hour, yellow light flashing atop the vehicle. I made a snap decision and was beside the driver side door in a preternatural instant. I dragged the security guard halfway out of the car and ripped his throat open. The car kept rolling slowly forward. I sucked hard on both the jugular vein and the carotid artery. Why let good blood go to waste?
I pumped three bullets into the guy’s throat and shoved him back behind the wheel. He was going to bleed out what little was left and die before the car ran into something. I dropped the pistol as I launched myself skyward. I can always get another gun without much trouble. This is America, after all.
I swooped low as I passed over the Delaware River on my way home and dumped the purse with all the credit cards and other IDs into the gently flowing waters.