Club Dead

could possibly use this many keys. I flicked through them desperately, and finally selected one that had GM stamped on a black rubber cover. I unlocked the door and reached into the musty interior, which smelled strongly of cigarettes and dogs. Yes, the shotgun was under the seat. I broke it open. It was loaded. Thank God Jason believed in self-defense. He’d showed me how to load and fire his new Benelli.
    Despite my new protection, I was so scared, I wasn’t sure I could get around to the front of the store. But I had to scout out the situation, and find out what had happened to Eric. I eased down the side of the building where the old Toyota truck was parked. Nothing was in the back, except a little spot that picked up a stray fraction of light. The shotgun cradled in one arm, I reached down to run a finger over it.
    Fresh blood. I felt old and cold. I stood with my head bowed for a long moment, and then I braced myself.
    I looked in the driver’s window to find the cab was unlocked. Well, happy days. I opened the door quietly, glanced in. There was a sizeable open box on the front seat, and when I checked its contents, my heart sank so low, I thought it’d come out the bottom of my shoes. On the outside, the box was stamped “Contents: Two.” Now it contained one silver mesh net, the kind sold in “mercenary” magazines, the kind always advertised as “vampire proof.”
    That was like calling a shark cage a sure deterrent from shark bites.
    Where was Eric? I glanced over the immediate vicinity, but I saw no other trace. I could hear traffic whooshing by on the interstate, but the silence hung over this bleak parking lot.
    My eyes lit on a pocketknife on the dash. Yahoo! Carefully placing the shotgun on the front seat, I scooped up the knife, opened it after I’d laid down the shotgun, and I held it ready to sink into the tire. Then I thought twice. A wholehearted tire-slashing was proof someone had been out here while the robbers were inside. That might not be a good thing. I contented myself with poking a single hole in the tire. It was just a smallish hole that might have come from anything, I told myself. If they did drive off, they’d have to stop somewhere down the road. Then I pocketed the knife—I was certainly quite the thief lately—and returned to the shadows around the building. This hadn’t taken as long as you might think, but still it had been several minutes since I’d assessed the situation in the convenience store.
    The Lincoln was still parked by the pumps. The gas port was closed, so I knew Eric had finished refueling before something had happened to him. I sidled around the corner of the building, hugging its lines. I found good cover at the front, in the angle formed by the ice machine and the front wall of the store. I risked standing up enough to peek over the top of the machine.
    The robbers had come up into the higher area where the clerk stood, and they were beating on him.
    Hey, now. That had to stop. They were beating him because they wanted to know where I was hiding, was my guess; and I couldn’t let someone else get beaten up on my behalf.
    “Sookie,” said a voice right behind me.
    The next instant a hand clapped across my mouth just as I was about to scream.
    “Sorry,” Eric whispered. “I should have thought of a better way to let you know I was here.”
    “Eric,” I said, when I could speak. He could tell I was calmer, and he moved his hand. “We gotta save him.”
    “Why?”
    Sometimes vampires just astound me. Well, people, too, but tonight it was a vampire.
    “Because he’s getting beaten for our sakes, and they’re probably gonna kill him, and it’ll be our fault!”
    “They’re robbing the store,” Eric said, as if I were particularly dim. “They had a new vampire net, and they thought they’d try it out on me. They don’t know it yet, but it didn’t work. But they’re just opportunistic scum.”
    “They’re looking for us, ” I said furiously.
    “Tell me,” he whispered, and I did.
    “Give me the shotgun,” he said.
    I kept a good grip on it. “You know how to use one of these things?”
    “Probably as well as you.” But he looked at it dubiously.
    “That’s where you’re wrong,” I told him. Rather than have a prolonged argument while my new hero was getting internal injuries, I ran in a crouch around the ice machine, the propane gas rack, and through the front door into the store. The little bell over the door rang like