Big Crimson 1: There's a New Vampire in Town

By F.C. Schaefer

No good deed goes unpunished, so beware when a desperate stranger comes to the door after sundown pleading for help and sanctuary. Good Samaritan Kyle gives Jim refuge and saves his life by killing his attacker, only to discover that this desperate stranger is a bloodthirsty creature of the night, one who is now in his debt and feels honor bound to repay the favor. For Kyle, life takes an unimaginable turn when he discovers that his act of kindness has earned him the wrath of a clan of vampires. No matter, his new blood-drinking friend, Jim, has his back despite the long odds.

Jennifer didn’t know how lonely she was until she met the new guy next door; what she didn’t know was that the object of her affection is a member of the Undead. Now Jennifer is caught in the middle of the supernatural vendetta engulfing the little town of Harlow.

Also caught up in the carnage are: the law abiding landlord with a murderous past; the pawn shop owner who is most certainly not what he seems; the town cop who is not up to job; the correctional officer who is as much a criminal as the men he guards; a convenience store clerk who has lost the love of a great girl because of the color of his skin; his love struck co-worker who doesn’t know his woman is cheating on him; a creature of the night with a taste for human flesh as well as warm blood; a ravenous monster trapped forever in the body of child; a woman forced against her will to live the vampire life; and a trio of slackers who couldn’t care less. All of them, the good and the evil alike, will be swept up in an orgy of death in a war to claim the legacy of the Big Crimson.

BIG CRIMSON 1 is the first volume in a trilogy of epic horror, and love between the unlikeliest of pairs. The story starts here, and if you are a fan of Stephen King and enjoyed From Dusk Till Dawn and 30 Days of Night, this series is for you. Click the Purchase button now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: F.C. Schaefer
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781005826123

F.C. Schaefer

I have always been a fan of such old school monsters as the vampire, the werewolf, the unquiet ghost and the walking dead, and always had the strong ambition to write a novel with one of these creatures in the spotlight. That is why I wrote the BIG CRIMSON series, my vampire trilogy. I consider myself a fan of Anne Rice, having read her VAMPIRE CHRONICLES, but instead of her tales of aristocratic creatures of the night, I wanted my vampires to be a little more down and dirty, less the trappings of nobility and more like organized crime. Most of my blood drinkers lurk in darkened alleys or rundown tenements, and some may be found on the back roads in the wee hours. All of them in search of unwary prey. They come together in clans, ruled over by their “Makers,” who run their fiefdoms with an iron hand. Then there are the outlaw vampires who refuse to bend the knee to any Maker and the allegiance to any clan. They roam from city to city, making their way the best they can having perfected the art of “passing for mortal.” What happens when one of those outlaw vampires is suddenly in need of the help from a mortal is the opening act of BIG CRIMSON.My favorite type of horror story has always been one where the ordinary and the everyday and the supernatural co-exist, where the “normal” façade of the world we take for granted is pulled back to reveal the house of horrors behind. That is the premise I used in BIG CRIMSON and a couple of short stories I’ve written, one of which, PICK YOUR POISON, could best be described as The Stand meets Dracula and the Wolfman. A concept that would make for a great straight to DVD movie back in the day. Another one, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO COME THROUGH THE DOOR, turns on the mundane encountering the extraordinary when a vampire has to go shopping for a new suit.Another genre I have written in is alternate history. ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 is my story of what might have happened if the tragic events of November 22, 1963 had turned out differently. It is one of the great What Ifs of the 20th Century, and I wanted to write something original—or as close to it as I could come—that would engage fans of speculative history. Using the framing device of an oral history of an America where John F. Kennedy lived to run for re-election, I tell the story through the eyes of characters caught up in events that threaten to spin out of control at any moment, as history sails into uncharted waters.BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORDS is an alternate history of the Vietnam War and comes from my lifelong passion for military history. It is the first thing I actually tried to seriously write. Like my other alternate history books, this one too is told through an oral history by the men and women who fought in and opposed a Vietnam War where the course of history took a different turn when the Communists launch the Tet Offensive three years early, and defeat in Southeast Asia appear eminent. This is when President Lyndon Johnson turns to Richard Nixon to help reverse the war, and where this leads, is the heart of the book. I wanted my first work to be something other than the usual alternate history tropes—no What If the South Won the Civil War or What If Hitler had been victorious. I tried to do write something unique, something fans of this sort of thing might enjoy. Hope I was successful.For the better part of the last decade I have been working on a fantasy trilogy, talk about biting off more than you can chew. My story has a lot of influences, more leaning toward anime and comic books than Tolkien. I outlined and outlined and outlined; then I wrote three books. Then I decided the back story of my fantasy world deserved a book of its own, so I outlined another novel, which needs to be rewritten and revised before I can even think about producing a first draft. I might need to find some beta readers before I proceed any further. After I finished the initial three books in my fantasy series, I took a break and wrote another alternate history novel, this one titled WORLD WAR NIXON. It’s set in the 1970s and is a take what would have happened had some key events of the Nixon Era like the Watergate break in and the opening to Red China had gone differently. It still needs some work, but I hope to get it launched soon.Please check me out on twitter at @FCSNVA to find coupon codes for discounts on my books.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

1

Sundown, Tuesday, June 8th, 2010.

You got a real problem, boy, but lucky for you, I’m here with the solution, Captain Quinn said as he sat down, uninvited, at the kitchen table.

Kyle Harris had a very good idea what the captain’s solution was and wanted no part of it, but he knew better than to say so, not aloud anyway. Captain Garland Quinn, a 20-year veteran of the Virginia State Correctional System, was a man to whom few people said the word no, especially if you were a fellow officer with less than a year on the job and fresh off their probationary period. You don’t have to go out of your way to do anything for me, Kyle replied as he took a seat across the table from the captain. Got no problems I can’t handle.

That’s not the way I hear it, Quinn continued. The smallness of the kitchen only accentuated the captain’s size. The man stood nearly six foot four, and his shirt size had to be XXL; when he strode through the halls of Building D of the Harlow Correctional Facility in full uniform, even hardcore inmates doing a 20-to-life stretch without parole knew better than to meet Quinn’s steely glare when he passed. Not the way I hear it at all, and I pride myself on keeping up with what’s going on with my men. That’s because I need to know if there’s trouble at home, because if there’s trouble at home, then a man don’t have his mind focused on his job, and in our line of work, if a man don’t have his focus on the fucking animals he is responsible for making stay in their pens, then those animals are liable to step over the line and shank him in the back—or far worse, shank me in the back. Sometimes that trouble comes in the female form, a wife or a girlfriend is stepping out on him—that happens an awful lot when a man has to work a lot of night shifts. And in those cases, I always take the man aside and tell him to do one of two things: work it out or dump the bitch; there‘s always plenty of pussy in the pond, just go catch yourself another one and get your mind back on the job. And do it quick. But lucky for you, you ain’t got any pussy problem, do you, Harris?

Kyle knew he was no physical match for the captain, even though he’d played running back for the Homer McCoy Bobcats for two years in high school and still worked out on the weight bench every day; Quinn had him by a half-foot and a good fifty pounds of muscle. But that did not stop Kyle from squaring his shoulders and sitting back in his chair before answering Quinn with a most casual, No, sir, I most definitely ain’t got a pussy problem. That was true on the face of it, but only because his girlfriend of six months had dumped him for a car salesman and moved with the guy to Richmond when the asshole had taken a job there. But Kyle was not about to enlighten the captain with the facts of the matter.

Quinn spoke and proved he was a good step ahead of Kyle. You ain’t got no pussy problem because you ain’t got no pussy, period. That girl you were seeing—what was her name? She was a waitress over at Happy Sam’s Bar and Grill.

LeAnn. LeAnn Anderson.

Yeah, LeAnn Anderson, a real piece of ass; used to see her when I took the wife out to dinner on Friday night. Take her to a place with a dessert bar and my wife is happy. That pretty little LeAnn worked our table a couple of times, and she gave good service. Bet that ain’t all she was good at giving. I’d like to have bent her over the table right there and slapped it to her; always left a little bit larger tip when she waited on our table.

It was evening and the glow from the fluorescent light overhead gave Quinn the same pallor as the monster from the old black and white Frankenstein movies, the terminal crew cut he wore only reinforcing the resemblance. She dumped you and took off with a car salesman, and I bet it was not because of what he had in his pants, but what he had in his wallet.

Kyle was shaken by how well Quinn had done his homework; it was all he could do not to let it show. It’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. He desperately hoped his reply struck the right note of false indifference.

Bullshit. You don’t mean a word of that, boy! Quinn was reading him like a book. Your girl walked because you didn’t have enough green; that would piss off any man. But that’s the heart of your problem, ain’t it? Your problem is a lack of the green.

I’m doing okay.

Quinn flashed a knowing smile. I’m not buying that. Remember I know exactly, to the penny, what the starting pay for a correctional officer is; you’re barely taking home two grand a month, and that ain’t enough to make a truck payment, cover the rent on this place, buy groceries, and still have enough left over to afford a sex life. Oh, and I didn’t even mention things like utilities, video games, cable, cell phone, and internet.

I have the right to sub-let this place and split the bills with a co-renter. It‘s all covered.

Yeah, co-renter, which, as of ten days ago, is something you don’t have. You were splitting the rent on this place with the guy who was assistant manager over at the Safeway. Thompson was his name. Glenn Thompson, yeah, that was it. Nice clean-cut-looking fella, just starting out in middle management and working his way up. Too damn bad for him Uncle Sam sent him on a detour, but that what happens when you’re a radio specialist in the reserves and your country is at war. Now he’s over there in Afghanistan getting shot at by the towel heads, and you’re sitting here in this perfect little remodeled shotgun house with a handful of bills without his salary to cover half of them. Am I right?

Kyle’s fists balled at Quinn’s words. The Captain had his number no matter what. For six months he’d had the best house mate in the world in Glenn Thompson because their work schedules always complimented each other. Whenever Kyle worked days, Glenn worked nights, and vice versa, so that Kyle usually had the run of the house when he was home. He could watch whatever DVD he wanted when he wanted, play Bio Shock whenever it pleased him, or bring LeAnn back to his place after a date with the assurance they would not have to shut his bedroom door. For Kyle, who had been raised in a double-wide with his parents and four siblings, the little shotgun house on Yates Street in Harlow, Virginia—with its two bathrooms and full basement, not to mention a plank fence-enclosed back yard—might as well have been Graceland. To have to leave it now was almost too much to bear, but if the price of staying was accepting Captain Quinn’s solution, then he’d gladly hit the road.

I’ve put the word out and I’ll have somebody in here before the month is out. The only problem was that he’d had no takers. June was already more than half gone, and Wade Brown was a man who expected his rent very promptly on the first of the month. He’d gone out of his way to impress this fact on Kyle.

Quinn folded his arms and rested his elbows on the table. Yeah, the end of the month, he said. "It’s gonna be here before you know it, and what the hell are you gonna do if you don’t have someone to help pay all those pesky bills. They come no matter what the bank balance says. And I know all about the son of bitch you renting this place from—Wade Brown. You ain’t the first one to work at Harlow Correctional to rent one of his houses. You get one damn day late on the rent and he’s on you like stink on an ape. If you ain’t got his money, he’ll throw your ass out in the street with nothing but the shirt on your back, padlock the house, and sell all your belongings. That’s not exactly the proper legal way to go about an eviction under Virginia law, but I guess Brown figures if you can’t afford the rent, you sure as hell can’t afford a lawyer, so what the fuck. I hear tell Brown was renting one of these places he owns to some bikers—big hard asses, both arms covered with tats—and they got behind on the rent; he landed on them just like the way I told you. Brown threw one of those old boys right through a window when he wouldn’t move his ass when told. You think he’s gonna treat you any better, just because you put on a pretty uniform when you go to work. I don’t think so.

But it doesn’t have to come to that. No, sir, not by a long shot. I’m here to make your green problem go away, never to return. And the best part of the deal is that, you, Kyle Harris, have to do practically nothing, nothing at all, but count the ten pictures of Ben Franklin I’m going to put in your hand every month.

One thousand dollars a month? That surely would make all his green problems go away, but Kyle held his tongue, for if Captain Quinn expected him to jump at the offer the second money was put on the table, he was in for quite the let-down.

Yeah, that’s a lot of money, was all Kyle said.

Quinn plowed ahead. Damn straight that’s a lot of money, and like I said, you have to do practically nothing, nothing at all to earn it. Nothing except carry a little something extra in that brown bag with your lunch. Most of the time that little something extra will be weed or horse, sometimes it might be nothing more than over-the-counter painkillers or a couple of packs of Marlboros. You just put that brown bag in your locker before you start your shift, and when you come back for lunch or dinner—or whatever the hell you want to call it on graveyard—the little something extra you brought in with you will be gone. Of course, you’ll have to give me the combination to your lock first. But it’s like I said, practically nothing at all on your part.

All guards are subject to random searches at the front gate. Anybody caught bringing in contraband is in deep shit.

That’s already taken care of; you ain’t got nothing to worry about on that part. Which meant more than one guy working the front gate was getting a few pictures of Ben Franklin at the end of the week as well.

Well, that’s the thing, I would worry—worry a hell of a lot. Kyle was doing his best not to come right out and tell Quinn what the captain did not want to hear. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer and all, but… He couldn’t find the right words to not say what was right on the tip of his tongue.

Quinn’s expression took on the look of a car dealer going in for the hard sell. "But what? Is that hesitation on your part I detect? Maybe you have moral objections to selling narcotics to convicted criminals? Well, let me set you straight on that point right here and now: among those incarcerated inside the big wire fence at the Harlow Correctional Facility are the following: a hundred and twenty-five individuals doing twenty to life for first degree murder; ninety-seven upstanding citizens pulling stretches for second degree murder; seventy-five rapists and sixty others guilty of sexual assault; and a whopping two hundred twenty-nine individuals sent behind the wire for using a firearm during the commission of a felony. I’m not even mentioning all the other malcontents sent in there for spousal abuse, child abuse, extortion, or simple old assault and battery. Pen them in together under one roof and that’s a hell of a lot of pent-up aggression bouncing off the walls. And the Commonwealth pays us to baby sit this herd and make sure everyone plays nice.

"And how do you make all these murderers, rapists, leg breakers, and conscienceless sadists play nice? That’s the question, and if it were up to me, I’d ration out a daily dose of valium, Quaaludes, Prozac, and whatever the hell else it would take to make the motherfuckers sit and stare into space all day. And if they did that, all we’d have to do was wipe the drool off their chins a couple times a day and never again have to worry about having piss and shit thrown at us when we pass by a cell. But according to the laws of the land, you can’t force people to take drugs, not even the scum of the earth, the only exceptions being the sad residents in an old folks home, and they’re guilty of nothing more than living too damn long.

"So I improvise the next best thing—marijuana and heroin. They do take the edge off. And I’ve not mentioned the marvels of Oxycontin. It’s not my fault the politicians and the bureaucrats won’t give us the tools to make our thankless jobs easier And until the day they do, I’ll do it my way, and like any good American, I’m not above earning a buck for my trouble; it’s only fair since the Commonwealth expects us to get by on Wal Mart wages. Why should we if there are certain ‘families,’ ‘crews,’ and ‘gangs’ willing to expand their business behind our walls, and cut us in for a very fair share.

So do you get where I’m coming from? Do you read me? Are we on the same page? With that, Quinn bounced the ball back onto Kyle’s side of the court.

He chose his words carefully. I see your side of it. It was a side Kyle did not want be on—knew he could never be on and keep his self-respect, his very soul.

I need you to see more than my side of it. I need you to be on board. I need you to commit. You’re not stupid, and you proved that by getting out of that trailer park in West Virginia the first chance you had and making something of yourself.

I got to think about it. It was the lamest dodge in the book, but it was the only thing Kyle could think of to say. Even in the kitchen’s dim light, Kyle could see Quinn’s features turn to stone. Well, think about this, think about what would happen to a young man just starting out in a correctional system so desperate for manpower they’ve lowered the entry age to 18 so that he’s able to snatch up that high school diploma so that he can get out that West Virginia trailer park and get a good job right away. He gets to wear a snazzy-looking uniform, cuts quite the figure in it, very impressive, so impressive that he’s able to walk down the street to the neighborhood Quick Mart and buy a case of Budweiser and not get carded by the Mexican woman behind the counter. That’s underage drinking—something our society frowns on in a most mighty way—and I think Deputy Warden McHenry would really want to know if one of his men was abusing the rules in such a way. He would be reprimanded, a note would be put in his file, and he would be suspended without pay for a week—bet that’d blow a hole in his wallet. And when he came back to work, the brass would surely have their eyes on him; they’d do a search of his locker one day, maybe they’d find a bag of brown powder in there, even though he wanted nothing to do with such dirty things. Oh, that would not be pretty, not pretty at all, especially when this young man is taken off in cuffs, just like the criminals it was his job to guard. But that would make him a criminal himself, and he’d get a cell of his own—not in the prison where he’d worked, of course. No, it would be somewhere on the other side of the state, maybe at Bush Hill, down near the Tennessee line, but those jail house grapevines crawl a long way, and the word would get out. Could be one of his former co-workers would make a call, who knows? But one way or another, the inmates would know there was a former screw in the population; I don’t think I have to paint you a picture of what would happen next.

At that moment, the one thing Kyle Harris wanted to do more than anything else in the world was jump out of his chair and smash his fist repeatedly in Captain Garland Quinn’s face, to pound that knowing look into a bloody pulp, then drag the man’s carcass out the back door and deposit him face down in the dirt, whereupon Kyle would spit contemptuously onto the back of the captain’s head, thus giving the man’s corrupt offer a definitive answer. In his mind, Kyle saw himself doing all these things despite the captain’s advantage in muscle and height, but only in his mind. Instead, he kept his seat, said nothing, and felt like a rotten coward.

Quinn obviously took his silence for assent. Looks like we’re on the same page at last, he said and stood up. The shadowy light made his frame appear twice as large, to almost fill the room. He leaned across the table and thrust his massive hand at Kyle. I’ll be back before you start your next shift to go over the particulars.

Kyle rose and took the man’s hand; when they shook, Quinn made sure to squeeze like a vise, but Kyle refused to give him the satisfaction of a grimace. Good to have you on the team, the captain said as if Kyle were being hired to manage the morning shift at McDonald’s. In a matter of seconds, Quinn was out the back door and gone, the roar from the engine from his Dodge Ram fading as it backed down the driveway and onto Yates Street. A shift of gears and the truck sped away into the dusk.

For a very long time, Kyle stood in the middle of the kitchen, watching as the last remnants of daylight dissipated until all that could be seen outside the window over the sink was inky black. The back-yard was bathed in the pale brownish glow from the dusk-to-dawn light atop the pole at the end of the driveway—put there by the landlord, Mr. Brown, to make sure car thieves kept moving until they found darker pastures.

At last he went to the refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of Budweiser. It was part of the six-pack purchased two blocks away at the Quick Mart. How the hell did Quinn find out about that? He thought as he slammed the refrigerator door and strolled outside. Not that it matters jack shit now. Twisting off the top as soon he took a seat on the back steps, Kyle made a mental note to move the barbeque grill (bought at a Memorial Day yard sale for twenty bucks) back under the porch in case of an overnight thunder shower. Shouldn’t bother. Never use it again anyway.

And all because of that six-pack of Budweiser in the refrigerator.

No, all because he got used to having a six-pack of Budweiser in the refrigerator. Before Glenn was recalled to active duty, they’d had a deal: Kyle put up the money while Glenn did the actual purchasing. This arrangement was arrived at out of simple necessity. Glenn was more than a couple of years past legal age, while Kyle had yet to pass his 21st birthday and would not do so until the first day of August—a good two and a half months in the future on the