The semi-truck careened around the bend in the highway. Robert’s gut lurched as the top-heavy truck swayed into the turn. He slammed on the brakes and his teeth clacked as the driver’s side tires began to skip along the asphalt. The steering wheel jerked against the hands that were struggling to keep control. The turn was too sharp and the truck left the road. Robert pulled the steering wheel as hard as he could and pumped the brakes, again.

  “WWHAHAHAAAHA!” he squealed, as the semi started sliding sideways, and the entire cab started pitching over.

  He kept a death grip on the wheel, leaning away from the tip. The last of the drive wheels reached the grass and the truck's rear end drifted around. The truck spun out and came to a stop facing the highway.

  I’m gonna gut that bitch!

  Robert opened the cab door and hopped down to the ground. He went around the truck and gave it a quick inspection.

  Fuck Dillon, too! Chasing off after her and leaving me to take care of the cargo and track his ass down.

  Aside from being covered in dust, he found no issues with the truck and climbed back in. He cruised slowly, not quite trusting that the semi suffered no damage. He approached another bend. Although this was a wider curve, Robert made sure to take it slow. He exited the curve and entered a long stretch of straight road. The truck sped up as Robert glided through the gears. He pressed the clutch, about to shift again, when a lone figure stumbled out of the nearby tree line.

  Robert stayed on the clutch and let the truck roll down the road. Slowing, as it approached the traveler, the truck grunted as Robert selected a much lower gear and let off the clutch. The truck lurched and the engine released a series of decompression groans as it slowed.

  wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb wumb

  The sun was low behind the figure. The truck crept forward; ever slowing. Robert squinted through the setting sun’s rays. The walker steadily shambled toward the truck. Robert continued to slow as he neared the walker. The gap was less than fifty feet wide before Robert could discern who the figure was.

  Holy Hell. What happened to you?

  The walker dropped to one knee, before toppling onto their side. Robert pulled to a stop and hurled himself out of the truck cab.

  “DILLON! I’M COMING! DILLON!”

  Robert slid next to the crumpled form and rolled it over.

  “Where is the damn trailer, Bobby?”

  Robert ignored the question, instead focusing on the many wounds Dillon suffered.

  “What the hell did that bitch do to you?” Robert asked, through gritted teeth.

  “That bitch—” Dillon winced as Robert pulled on his arm, “--she is not human, and she is not a drol’ka.”

  Robert’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. He shook his head as he pulled back a torn section of Dillon’s shirt.

  “Hol’den or Kai’Den?”

  “Well, Bobby Flay, the Kai’Den never get their hands dirty. That, and the fact we aren’t dead, make me think Hol’den.”

  “Hand of Death?” Robert asked

  “She was good, Robby Boy, she was no Penth’Thoora, or we would both be dead. She was fast and strong. But she didn’t have weapons and she was weaker than me. As soon as I saw her, I knew she was Rah’ka’ven” Dillon informed the other man.

  “She got you good, Dillon.”

  “I need the trailer. Why didn’t you bring the damn trailer, Robert Dale?”

  Hearing his full name made Robert shudder. Dillon messed with his younger brother by constantly calling him different names, but Robert knew that Dillon only threw his middle name around when he was pissed.

  “I had to track you down. No way I could’ve kept up with ya’ll on foot.”

  Dillon reached up and grabbed a fistful of Robert’s hair and slowly pulled his brother’s face toward his own. Robert clenched his eyes and tried to turn away, but Dillon only pulled harder. He forced each word through a tight-lipped grin.

  “How the hell am I supposed to fix this—” Dillon used his free hand to tear his tattered shirt off his chest; exposing a length of green tee post that protruded from just below his right collar bone. “—without my goddamn trailer?”

  Robert suddenly stopped pulling away from Dillon and his head bumped into his brothers’.

  “Hell, Dillon. Is that what’s got you so pissed about the trailer?” He smiled back at his brother’s angry glower. “I’m not stupid, Dillon.”

  Robert stood up and tugged on Dillon’s hand.

  “Let’s go, Dillon. I got what you need. It’s in the truck, dumbass.”

  “Watch yourself, Robert Dale,” Dillon emphasized the middle name. “I could be a hundred times more dead than this, and I could still kick your ass.”

  Robert’s smile evaporated. He hooked Dillon’s arm over his shoulder and the two men went to the truck. It took no less than twenty explicatives for Dillon to crawl into the cab. As he helped hoist Dillon up, Robert noticed a dozen other wounds on his brother’s back and legs.

  Gonna gut you, bitch! Jesus. Look what you did to him.

  Dillon’s foot slipped and he slid into Robert, who happened to be in the middle of stepping up to the next step. Robert pitched backward, and Dillon rode him to the ground. The two men hit hard, and Dillon moaned as a dozen fresh wounds screamed in protest.

  “It doesn’t matter, anymore, Robert the Bruce. Just bring them out here…to me.”

  “The sun’s still up. Right here, in the road?” Robert questioned.

  “Who the hell cares? Everybody is dead. It’s a new world. Our world.” Dillon waved for Robert to hurry.

  Dillon passed out and woke with a startle, as a naked body tumbled next to him. He heard the thump as Robert hopped from the cab. Dillon had lost too much blood and he fought hard to stay awake.

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  “Don’t worry about a thing, Dillon. I’ll take care of this and we’ll have you better in no time.” Robert assured.

  Robert rolled the young woman onto her back. She was still limp, from a recent dose of ether. She had a fresh purple bruise, on her shoulder, from being pushed out of the truck. Robert cut the cinch straps from her wrists and ankles. Normally, Robert would take his time. He would savor every last slice. That would have to wait. His brother was running out of time.

  He kicked the woman’s legs out wide, then did the same to each arm. Feeding Dillon was an art form. He needed his sustenance directly from a beating heart. She needed to be breathing; alive. Robert looked at his brother, deciding the best position to get her blood into his mouth. He tapped his chin with a short, curved gutting knife.

  What to do? What to do?

  He circled the two bodies, once, before a wheeze from Dillon renewed his sense of urgency.

  I got it!

  Robert grabbed the girl’s ankle and dragged her to Dillon. Stepping over his brother, Robert turned and positioned the back of the girl’s knee over Dillon’s mouth. He stood at Dillon’s shoulders and squatted over his head. Carefully, Robert lifted the limp leg and jabbed his knife into the flesh above her calf. Blood spurted from around the blade and wet Robert’s hand and wrist. Robert dropped the knife and rushed to lower the leg over Dillon’s mouth. Once done, he got up and circled back to the victim’s head.

  Robert had time to kill. Feeding didn’t take long, but healing took longer. He never saw his brother this hurt, and he wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to heal enough to crawl into the truck. Boredom did not sit well with Robert. It was one of the reasons his older brother always kept him busy. When Robert’s mind was left to wonder, it often led to nefarious deeds. Dillon was preoccupied, and Robert was very bored.

  He convinced himself that Dillon would have no reason to be upset with him for making a few shallow slices. She was drugged, and unconscious, and Dillon needed her heart to race, just a bit, to keep her blood flowing.

  Robert hated faces. Faces were vanity. They were garbage. The face was where the mouth lied and the eyes ignored. It was where the identity resided and all our useless emotions made themselves known. The world put so much importance on the face, but not Robert. Robert knew it was a distraction. A cash cow cooked up by corporations to make everybody feel ugly enough to buy their newest wrinkle cream or serum. To Robert, the face was tainted.

  His work was pure and raw. He was an artist. More than that, he was a savant. Robert could barely read and was never good at anything, except this. He honed his craft over the years. Robert knew where to slice deep and where to cut shallow. You had to avoid cutting certain nerves, so you didn’t prevent the sensation of pain. Blood loss was never an issue, since it usually went to Dillon, but Robert could tweak his approach if Dillon was in the mood for fast food, or he could keep them hurting for days. He once kept a meat sack alive for a week so Dillon could take a sip, whenever he wanted to.

  Robert sat and crossed his legs. He placed the girl’s head in his lab and began to trace the contours of her face with his razor-sharp blade. He loved the way the fine cuts bled so slowly. He played a game on her forehead. Like a master surgeon, he delicately drew the blade across her skin. He wanted to see how long he could keep his trail going before he got trapped by the blood seeping from her skin. “Snake” he believed it was called. He used to play it on an old Nokia 6010 cell phone; the ones shaped like a brick, with a greyscale screen.

  One of her nostrils was larger than the other. It bugged Robert. With a flick of his wrist, he sliced her nose off her face. He angled the cut too deep and took the middle of her upper lip off.

  Her eyes popped open wide and she looked through Robert. He held her gaze for a second before she screamed and lifted her head. Robert rammed the knife handle into the center of her forehead and drove her skull against the asphalt. Her eyelids stayed peeled, but her eyes rolled backward into their sockets.

  Dillon began making slurping sounds. He raised his hands and gripped the girl’s leg. As strength began to flow into him, Dillon stopped lapping at the blood and began ripping chunks of flesh with his teeth. He would chew and chomp and suck the blood from each mouthful, before spitting out the masticated flesh.

  When Dillon began chewing on his meals, Robert knew the heart was getting too weak to force the remainder of the blood out. The chewing was Dillon’s way of squeezing as much blood from his victims as possible.

  Guess she’s about spent. Looks like he’ll need another appetizer.

  Robert viciously, and vigorously, stabbed the girl’s chest and abdomen. Blood flung into his eyes and he could barely squint enough to see where he was stabbing. That didn’t matter. The fine vibrations of the razor-edge parting flesh, the surprise resistance when the blade sank deep and deflected off a rib, the squelch as the knife slid through flesh and licked the unseen viscera.

  Stab…he inspected the knife.

  Dark blood means liver.

  Stab. Stab. Stab.

  Pink blood and bubbles. That is a lung.

  Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab.

  And that smell means bowels, and now our game is over.

  Robert pulled his shirt over his nose and drug the mutilated body by the hair. He pulled her around the truck and dumped her just off the road. Looking at his work filled him with joy. This is why he and Dillon worked. It was symbiotic. It always had been. They had the same mom, but they didn’t know their real fathers. Robert wasn’t like Dillon. Robert was a normal human. Dillon had the blood of the Drol’ka Choth. Robert wasn’t sure of the significance of the term, but Dillon said the Drol’ka Choth were the first ones. The term meant “eaters of the blood of mankind” and their lineage was called drol’ka…or just eaters. Dillon’s father was drol’ka. Dillon had the same blood, but less of it

  Dillon can drink blood, but it isn’t necessary since he can sustain himself with regular food. The feeding is what charges Dillon’s super abilities. It makes him stronger, faster, with keener senses, and he can heal.

  Honestly, Robert thought his brother was a fucking vampire. He imagined it was some kind of “Day Walker” situation; like in the Blade movies. It didn’t matter what it was. It was fortunate for Robert to have a brother who drank human blood. It made their dynamic efficient. Two people share the planning and execution, but only one victim is needed to satisfy both their needs. The only issue was, that Dillon didn’t like it when Robert played with his dinner. He thought it was sick and disturbing. While Dillon was an absolute jock of a man, he was not a sociopath, like Robert. Dillon still had the same human emotions as everybody else. In truth, Dillon was a junky. He was addicted to the way feeding made him feel. He became superhuman. Nothing could touch him. He justified the feedings by rationalizing it. Robert is going to kill them, anyway, so Dillon was a scavenger, not a monster. Robert was miswired. Sympathy, empathy, remorse...Robert knew what these words meant, but never knew their touch.

  Robert wasn’t afraid of Dillon. Robert couldn’t fear anything; not in the sense of dread or terror. Robert was aware that Dillon could rip him in half, but that wasn’t what kept him in check. For Robert, it was quid pro quo. Dillon was an asshole to Robert, but Dillon loved his little brother. As long as the two of them were together, nobody would fuck with Robert…except Dillon. Robert knew Dillon would never hurt him, too bad. So even though Dillon didn’t like Robert’s grizzly interests, Dillon still took his chances. He just made sure to hide the evidence.

  Dillon can’t bitch about what he don’t know about.

  As he came back around the truck, Robert noticed Dillon was sitting up and trying to pull the T-post from his shoulder. He quickly ran over and, with Dillon, tugged the metal free.

  “Feeling better, Dillon?”

  “Please, tell me you brought more than one small girl for me.” Dillon scowled at Robert.

  “You kiddin’ me. Course I did. Got two more in the truck.” Robert took Dillon’s elbow and pulled him up.

  “Let’s go then, Rockin’ Robin. Got to grab our trailer and then find that bitch, and her friends. I think there are four, or five, of them. That should fill our quota, and we can be on our way.”

  “Hell yeah.” Robert cheered.

  “I’m driving.” Dillon snapped at Robert. “Keys.”

  “But, how the heck are you—”

  “Keys. Now.”

  Robert proffered the keys and grumbled about it being bullshit.

  “You need to feed, Dillon. You can’t drink…and drive.” He argued.

  Dillon stopped and looked up to Robert, who was about to close the passenger door.

  “Why the hell not? You worried about me getting a DUI?” Dillon joked.

  Robert had just shimmied into his seat and buckled his seat belt when he heard Dillon yell.

  “WHAT IN THE—”

  Robert froze and listened. Silence. He unbuckled his belt and stretched toward the driver’s seat. He could just see the upper half of Dillon, over the driver’s door. Dillon was standing at the side of the road.

  “WHAT THE HELL DID I TELL YOU ABOUT THIS SHIT!” Dillon roared.

  Robert hopped into the bunk area and looked at the two unconscious men. He needed to figure out how to get Dillon feeding, as quickly as possible.