Bad Moon Rising (49 page)

Mike felt totally alienated from the others, as if he were from another world or part of a different species; then, darkly, he realized that indeed he was. Ever since he had opened himself up to what he was and who he was, ever since he had let the
dhampyr
within him emerge, his whole world had changed. He looked at the others and wondered how it was that they could not hear the screams that constantly shrilled in his ears, how they could not sense the huge, pervasive atmosphere of total malevolence that was clamped down over the entire town.

Crow reached back and took Val’s hand and their eyes met. She mouthed the words
“I’m scared.”
He nodded and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, and his own lips formed the words
“I love you.”
It wasn’t much to offer each other, but it was the only talisman they had to share.

As LaMastra drove, he tried not to think about what was going to happen. The sight of Frank Ferro charred and blackened in death was burned into the front of his brain, regulating his rage, keeping the gas turned up. It kept the fear banked.

He flicked a glance now and then at the others, seeing them in the rearview mirror, watching as they prepared for what was ahead. Twice he saw something weird and almost spoke up. It was there and gone, just a shimmer in the air of the backseat between Mike and Val. There and gone when he blinked.

“We’re here,” LaMastra said quietly, and Crow turned as the H1 approached the turnoff to Dark Hollow Road. “God help us all.”

There was no reception for them, no guard unit of vampires. Griswold was incredibly confident, or arrogant.

LaMastra made the turn. Everyone checked their weapons for the twentieth time and slapped pockets to feel the reassuring bulges of extra ammunition. Val took a jar of garlic oil from her pocket, smeared some on, and handed it around. When Crow was finished, he handed it back to Val, who reached forward and dabbed some on LaMastra’s throat and face as he fought the car along the rutted road.

Then, suddenly they were in the clearing. LaMastra eased the car to a stop and switched off the engine.

Crow turned in his seat and faced the others, though inside the shadowy car he could barely see them; even so they all felt each other’s presence. “No pep talk, no rousing speech,” he said. “We go in fast and dirty, and we kill as many of them as we can. Val, if I die, you can’t go to pieces, just as I can’t if you’re killed. That’s the way to lose a war. If any of us dies, then the others have to stay focused.”

“They killed my family,” Val said tightly. “I want them all dead.”

“Vince?”

The cop grunted. “Frank may have been a stuffy old fart, but he was a good man. And he was my friend. I think I deserve some kind of payback.” He paused and grunted again; maybe it was a laugh. “Besides, we LaMastras are hard sonsabitches to kill.”

“Yeah, so I noticed.” Crow turned to where Mike’s silhouette crouched on the edge of the back seat. “Mike?”

“You know what I think,” he said and jerked open the door.

LaMastra glanced at his retreating back. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer there’s got attitude.”

“Lay off him, Vince,” said Crow.

“Hey, it’s not criticism. I just don’t want to have to waste time protecting him, you dig?”

Val jacked a round into her shotgun. “This is war. Everyone pulls their own weight.”

They got out. The ATVs were out of gas, but Crow picked up the gasoline sprayer unit and slipped it on as they all looked down the hill. He took coils of rope from the duffels strapped to the ATVs, tied them to the bumper of the Hummer, and tossed the ends over the edge. Overhead the storm clouds had thinned and there was a hint of moonlight, just enough to paint pale silver on the descending line of shrubs. They lingered at the top for only a moment, and then without a further word they started down the hill, using the ropes as guidelines but moving fast, hurrying toward the swamp.

(1)

“Party time!” Vic said.

Jonatha heard the faint squeak of a hinge and turned to see the two tall cabinets beside the door open. Two men stepped out, both of them grinning at Vic’s little joke.

“Jonatha! Look out!” she heard Newton shout through the open doorway, but his call ended in a choking cough.

Jonatha screamed and brought her shotgun up as one of the monsters lunged at her. There was a huge explosion and the recoiling stock hit her hard in the stomach. The vampire fell on her and bore her to the floor; she landed hard and shoved at him, and was surprised when the creature just rolled off and lay still. Then she saw the ragged red hole in its chest, and understood.

She scrambled to a sitting position and swung the gun around, but the trigger clicked empty. She’d forgotten to jack in a new round, and the other vampire simply snatched the weapon from her hands.

“Stupid bitch,” Vic said.

“She killed Marty!” complained the remaining vampire. “What the hell she have in that gun?”

“Probably garlic,” Vic drawled, and laughed as the vampire suddenly thrust the gun away, not wanting to be anywhere near it. “Go outside and play,” Vic suggested. “I’ll take care of LaKisha here.”

The vampire looked from her to its dead companion, and then with a hiss it leapt past Jonatha and plowed into the crowd of stunned onlookers. The creature grabbed the nurse and clamped its jaws around her throat; blood sprayed the wall. The patients screamed and panicked, colliding with gurneys and wheelchairs and each other. The vampire laughed wildly, tossed the nurse’s body against the wall, and laughed like a happy kid as he chased an old lady down the hall.

Jonatha screeched in horror and fury and made a try for the shotgun, but Vic Wingate backhanded her with shocking force and speed. She pirouetted dizzily and crashed into a row of cabinets, but before she should fall Vic caught her under the armpit, spun her around, and jammed his pistol into her stomach.

“Whoa there, girlie-girl,” he wheezed. “I’ve been having a really bad day. I’ve been just hoping and praying for something to come along to cheer me up. Shows you I’m still in the groove.” He held the pistol in his burned hand and with his other he caressed the curve of her cheek.

In the hall, the vampire was bent over, feeding off the old lady, ignoring the other patients. When he felt the old woman’s heart give out, he plucked her off the floor and threw her at two other patients, who went down in a bone-breaking tumble. He rose and kicked a wheelchair over and stomped down on the head of the old man who toppled out of it. The old man’s head exploded and the vampire smiled. He was at the height of his powers after the long night of killing and feeding. He could kill all of these people if he wanted. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Vic playing with his new toy, and he smiled.

The vampire turned back to the crowd and grabbed the struts on the nearest gurney, on which lay a small man with a pain-gray face. The vampire froze in place, his hands still on the struts. The little man on the gurney was pointing a pistol at him. It was a huge Ruger Blackhawk and its mouth stared blackly at the vampire from less than six feet away. There was no way for the vampire to know if the gun was loaded with ordinary bullets or more garlic, and he paused in uncertainty. Terror and pain were painted all over the patient’s features and his eyes were glassy with fever.

The vampire smiled.

The man smiled.

The vampire lunged at him and the man shot him through the eye.

The blast threw the vampire backward, all life extinguished in a single moment as the garlic-filled dum-dum punched through his brain; the recoil pitched the patient back onto the bed with a chest-jarring thump. Newton dropped the pistol and clutched his shattered chest with both hands as new pain detonated within him.

Vic Wingate made Jonatha back up step by step until they were both at the door. He could see the hallway beyond and he saw the last of his bodyguards go down with his head half blown away. Vic kicked the door shut in the faces of the terrified patients. Keeping the gun in place, he released Jonatha with the other and reached out to turn the lock.

Jonatha knew she was going to die. She knew she was going to die badly, because she had a good idea who this man was—a man with a burned face who worked with the vampires. It had to be the kid’s stepfather. It had to be Vic Wingate. The thought terrified her so severely that she felt horror trying to pull her down into darkness. What was it the kid had said? Vic is Griswold’s right hand. It was Vic who rigged all the explosions. It was Vic who took care of Griswold all these years, who protected him. Vic had been behind most of what happened all along.

Vic saw the defeat in her eyes and licked his blistered lips. His good eye crawled up and down her. “My, my,” he said, “You are something. Just what the doctor ordered, ’cause it’s been a real bitch of a day.”

He backed her up to the examination table; her hip hit it hard and he moved so close to her that she breathed his exhaled breath. Vic put his free hand on her chest, cupping her breasts and hefting their weight. “My oh my oh my, but you are something else. You’re half unreal, you know that, girlie-girl? You’re like a gift from Heaven, you are. You just came down from Heaven to be with ol’Vic. You’re what a sick man needs to feel good. Shame you’re a nigger, but what the hell, it’s all pink inside.” Open sores oozed clear mucus on his face as he leered at her.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she begged as tears welled from her eyes. Her heart hammered to get out of her chest. “Please.”

“Well, well, it is nice to hear you say please.” He licked his lips again and his hand never stopped touching her. He sought out her nipples and pinched them and laughed as she yelped and flinched. Jonatha wanted to throw up. She wanted to run, but she felt as if all the power had been sucked out of her muscles by his invading touch. “Say it again. C’mon, girlie-girl, say it again.”

“P…please…”

“Again.”

“Please!”

“Again.”

“Please, for God’s sake! Please!”

“Well, since you ask so nice…” and he grabbed the collar of her sweatshirt and gave it a vicious and powerful jerk. Cloth ripped and his fingernails scraped painfully across her sternum. The gun barrel pressed harder as he ripped and tore at the cloth, shredded it, exposing her upper breasts and the white bra, and all the time he muttered a kind of chant that sent cold chills racing up and down her spine. “Here it comes. Oh boy, here it comes. Here it comes now…”

She saw the specter of death looming above Vic’s shoulder, she saw it grinning through his melted face and burning in his eyes. She saw the future in those fiery eyes. She saw rape and pain and humiliation, and at the end of it all, she saw her agonizing and pointless death. In all her nightmares of vampires and werewolves, in all her research into demons and beasts, in all of her studies into the nature of evil, she had never conjured an image more terrifying than this madman with the scorched face. She could understand monsters that killed because it was their supernatural nature, she could understand beasts that were trapped within the dictates of an ancient curse, or driven by primal instincts that were completely beyond control, but this was an ordinary man. A human being capable of making his own choices, capable of understanding right from wrong and good from evil. This was a chosen, deliberate evil, and Jonatha suddenly understood that this was the worst kind of evil. In this man she saw all the evil of the human kind seething with life and power, glaring at her with lust and hunger, ready to rip her life away.

“Here it comes, girlie-girl. Oh boy, here it comes…” His strong fingers hooked inside the edge of one bra cup and began to pull. Jonatha screamed.

And then she hit him.

Before she was even aware that she was going to do it, one hand smashed the pistol aside and the other slammed into Vic’s burned face with her rigid palm and hooked fingernails. It exploded the blisters and drove spikes of red-hot pain into his head—and he screamed even louder than Jonatha had. His finger jerked on the trigger and the gun fired, but the bullet tore into a cabinet.

“Get away from me!” Jonatha shoved him with both hands and Vic stumbled and stumbled back, but instead of taking the chance to run, she chased him and hit him again and again, pounding on the gory ruin of his face, screeching so shrilly that it hurt Vic’s ears almost as much as the blows that kept raining down. Vic’s blood splashed abstract patterns across her torn shirt, across her screaming face; it sparkled like rubies in her short hair; and he swung wildly with the pistol and caught Jonatha on the arm, spinning her halfway around.

Vic was in such immediate pain that he didn’t even try to shoot her—he just wanted to get away; so with blood in his eyes and his head in a bag of thorns he tore free and staggered toward the door and clumsied it open just as he heard a sound that chilled his boiling blood. Jonatha had retrieved her shotgun and jacked a round into the breech.

“Bastard!” She fired a shot that chopped a hole the size of a dinner plate out of the jamb a yard from his head, but Vic was ducking and weaving, and then he plowed into the crowd of patients, bashing and kicking at them, tossing them behind him to block pursuit and give her no chance at a shot.

In the hall, Newton lay on the gurney, nearly as blind with pain as Vic. He was frozen in the act of digging into his pants pocket for a tissue to wipe sweat from his eyes. He didn’t know who this guy was—but like Jonatha he could make a reasonable guess. His pistol tangled in his sheets where he’d dropped it after shooting the vampire and after the shock of that act had buried a knife of pain in his chest. The gun wasn’t visible to this killer, but reaching for it would draw his fire.

Jonatha stood in the doorway, her shotgun aimed and ready, the barrel moving back and forth like a viper searching for exposed flesh to bite.

Vic grabbed a young girl, a bald chemo patient, and wrapped a thick arm around her throat, laying his pistol arm on her shoulder to steady it as he backed away from Jonatha. He squeezed off two shots; the girl screamed and the bullets hit the metal door frame and zinged off through the hallway. Jonatha ducked back inside and everyone else dropped to the ground.

Newton took the only chance he could. If he could distract Vic, draw his attention—even if meant drawing his fire—then it would give Jonatha at least a chance.

So he took out the one solid object in his pocket and flicked it at the back of Vic’s head. It was small, just an old dime—scraped and faded, with a hole through it so that someone could wear it around their ankle on a piece of twine—and it pinged off Vic’s skull doing no harm at all, but Vic spun that way, swinging the gun away from the girl and aiming it at Newton. There were two simultaneous blasts—one from Vic’s pistol, and his bullet punched a hole right into the wall an inch from Newton’s head, and the other was the deeper boom of Jonatha’a shotgun. The blast took Vic in the wrist and blew off half his arm.

A few of the birdshot peppered the arm of the chemo patient, and she cried out and fell, but Vic seemed painted into the moment, his body immobile, his face white with shock, his eyes bugging out at the ruin of his arm, which ended in a red tangle just below the elbow.

He opened his mouth to scream, to whimper, to say something…but nothing came out. Vic didn’t even seem to be registering the pain. He was frozen into a moment of total, horrified disbelief.

That gave Newton all the time he needed to pick up Weinstock’s heavy gun, steady his arm on the rail of the gurney, and aim.

“You’re Vic Wingate,” he said.

Vic’s eyes flicked to him. Tears burst from his eyes and rolled down his cheek. “I…I…please!”

“This is for Mike,” Newton said, and shot him four times in the face.

(2)

The Bone Man felt it happen. He felt Vic die. It sent an electric thrill through him that lifted some of the deadness from his heart. It was similar to what he had felt when Polk ate his gun, and when the vampires killed Gus Bernhardt. He’d even felt some of it—less of it—when Eddie Oswald died.

Now, every single one of the men who had murdered him thirty years ago was dead. Since he’d come back he’d prayed for something like that, for the twisted release that came from rough justice. It made him feel more free, less tied to the blood and nerves of this goddamned town.

As he drifted down the hill behind Mike Sweeney, Val, Crow, and Vince LaMastra, the Bone Man felt even less substantial than he had since he’d risen.

I could leave now
, he thought,
I could go and rest.
Without knowing how, or where that insight came from, he knew it was correct. His own murder was avenged, even if indirectly. He had saved Mike from Tow-Truck Eddie—several times in fact, whether by standing between the boy and the killer, or by whispering in the boy’s head at the right moment, or by drawing on all of his nearly exhausted reserves of energy in order to push Newton into the path of Oswald’s bullet. He’d done that; and as far as he could figure, that’s why he’d been brought back. Not to get justice, but to give justice some kind of fighting chance.

He’d tried to help Henry Guthrie’s family, but he certainly failed at that. On the other hand he’d stood between Crow and the roaches that day and maybe that had saved his life.

Yeah,
he mused,
I could step out of this ball game and sleep.

With Vic dead, the Bone Man knew that all he had to do was want it bad enough and he’d be gone. Leave the living to fight the dead, even though that fight was probably lost anyway.

I could go
…
but what if I stayed?

The climbers were nearly down to the floor of the Hollow. The end game was about to start, win or lose. It wasn’t his fight anymore. He’d already saved the town once, and died for it. Been
damned
for it.