Tale of the Dead Town (12 page)

Right in front of the door, Chad paused for a moment. The knocking stopped. The doorknob
clicked as it turned. Gently at first, then quickly . . .

With a tremendous snap, the doorknob, the plate around it, and the section of door
they were attached to all vanished. There was a gaping hole now. And the door had
swung open. Someone was standing there. It wasn’t his wife.

A horrible choking sensation assailed Chad. He reached up to claw at his own throat,
but before his hand got there his heart had stopped.

-

While it was indeed a hill, with a height of only about fifteen feet, it hardly had
a commanding view. And yet, for one of the two it was surely more than adequate. After
all, Lori wasn’t alone, and by her side was a man the darkness suited more than anyone.
Despite the moonlight, the plains they overlooked were as dark as anything imaginable,
but the sky to the east was already laced with the first thin light of dawn. The wind
pricked at Lori’s cheeks. It was as cold and sharp as an awl. Lori gazed at D while
D watched the eastern sky. Did those trapped in darkness hope for the light of dawn,
too?

So, what had they come up here to do? D bent down by Lori’s side and put one of the
fingers of his left hand to the ground. Lori read the words he wrote in the sand.
I hear voices
, D had written. What voices was he talking about? The message seemed almost cruel.

Lori turned up the collar of her coat. The wind tossed her soft hair as it passed.
So cold
, she thought.
Maybe people weren’t meant to live out in the wild.
After all, it was this cold even at daybreak.

The town was still moving. But going where? It had no destination. Where was it heading?
Not even Lori had any idea what D was thinking about. While it was true she’d been
raised in town, she’d also experienced life out in the wilderness. The wilds were
just too terrible. The fear inspired by the monstrosities and vicious beasts the Nobility
had loosed was still enough that the world would quake at dusk today.

Lori had wanted to go back to the town with all her heart. However, the paradise she’d
wanted now seemed so hollow. Lori no longer had words or sounds, which was exactly
why she could feel things so much more intensely . . . She thought of working reasonable
hours, and having reasonable accommodations, food, and clothing, of having a life
that was satisfactory, but not satisfying at the same time. The overwhelming sense
of loss from the people after they’d made it through the magnetic storm only served
to highlight her feelings. If she hadn’t experienced life in the wilder-ness, she
probably would’ve been just like the rest. Although she was far from conceited, Lori
knew there was something wrong with the town as it was now. But, in her silent world
of despair, did she have reason to be proud of being different from the rest? An inescapable
sense of loneliness filled her little heart. While she had the feeling the world she
was meant to live in was just around the next bend, for Lori that was a far-distant
land.
If I get off this town, what’ll happen then?
she wondered
.

To the east, the edges of the mountains had begun to glitter with a rosy hue. Light
slipped down the mountainside, becoming a torrent that flooded the plains, and in
no time Lori’s entire field of view was tinged in gold. She closed her eyes. Even
with them closed, she could see. She saw the color of wind. And how the wind shined
in its own way.

After a while, D opened his mouth. Lori tried to read his lips. She didn’t catch it
all. A bit more slowly, D repeated it. Finally she understood him.

Next time, come alone
. That’s what he was saying.

-

It was a little past six o’clock Morning when D called on the mayor. He found the
mayor sleeping in his chair in his office. As a cold pain tightened his chest, the
mayor jumped up and saw the Hunter standing by the door. Putting his hand to his throat
and breathing a sigh, he asked, “How long have you been there?!”

D said nothing.

“So, it seems I have you to thank for scaring the daylights out of me . . . Just having
a dhampir around seems to be enough to give folks nightmares.”

“I’m here because I need to ask you something.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right . . . You were by a little earlier, weren’t you? You’ll have
to excuse me. I was out at the time.”

“It seems you had the Knights detained.”

The Hunter’s softly spoken words made Mayor Ming’s eyes bulge. “Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Why did you stop them? Why’d you have them thrown in jail?”

“Do I have to answer that? The only thing you’re here to do is to kill our vampire.”

“And what if someone manufactured that vampire?” D asked.

“What?!”

“What did the man who boarded your town two centuries ago have to say to you?”

The mayor greeted the question with silence.

“What did it involve?”

More silence. Beads of sweat appeared on the mayor’s brow. “Just what I told you before,”
the mayor finally said.

His voice lacked strength of will, and D shattered it with his own soft tone. “What
did the man who visited here two hundred years ago tell you? I can imagine what it
was, but I won’t mention it. However, it was the Knights who accomplished what your
visitor hoped to do. But only after long years had passed. That’s what you wanted.
What did you want it for? Why did you have a falling-out with the Knights?”

Nothing from the mayor.

“After two centuries, vampires suddenly start showing up here, and yet we can’t find
the cause for it. There’s no one here sucking people’s blood and turning people into
vampires. There’s only one answer—they were manufactured. Made that way by somebody’s
special process.” D’s eyes looked like they could suck the soul from the mayor. “Made
with the technique he gave to you, and you taught to the Knights. What was in their
house?”

Bracing both hands on the head of his cane, the mayor hung his head. “Peace must be
maintained in town for all time.” A voice closer to a groan flowed from beneath the
mayor’s bowed head. “The conditions now are ideal. But we’re still hounded by destruction
and the creatures of nightmare. The mayor has a duty to protect the townsfolk.”

“Peace and ideals,” D muttered. Coming from his lips, the words lost all meaning and
became mere sounds.

“This town is what the Frontier would be ideally.” Saying this, the mayor lifted his
face. It was warped. His lustrous skin had surely been artificially augmented. The
ugly wrinkles that crept across his cheeks looked like furrows in a freshly plowed
field. “To live serenely out in the untamed forces of nature without fear of the Nobility
or their despicable ilk—that was the human ideal. When I formed this town and peopled
it with a select few, I believed I’d gotten closer to that goal than anyone. But many
threats still remained. It was still far from perfect . . . ”

The mayor’s finger pressed the top of his desk. Suddenly, D was in the middle of town.
It was the residential section immediately after the magnetic storm. The images must’ve
been shot with a holographic camera. The plastic roofs of many houses were melted,
and the electrical discharge towers gave off pale smoke and spat sparks in their death
throes. People with burns either hobbled along on their own or were held up by family
as they tottered slowly down the street, most likely headed to the hospital. A little
girl passed right through D’s waist and disappeared into a back room. A fire engine
ran over a sofa, then plowed through someone’s front door. Fires were springing up
everywhere. A middle-aged man grabbed an electrified handrail, lurching backward as
purple light shot from him. It was a ghastly tableau.

“This is the town at its limits. A mere magnetic field can’t even begin to compare
to the other monstrosities the Nobility loosed on the world. Yet, if running into
it wreaked this kind of havoc, then what the town considers ideal is still far shy
of what I have in mind.”

“And making those ideals a reality involves making sacrifices and taking certain steps,
doesn’t it?” the Hunter said. “Certain bloody steps, I’d say. What exactly did you
ask the Knights to do?”

The mayor swallowed loudly. He didn’t suppose D was going to leave now, and he wasn’t
the kind to be taken in by a lie. As Ming was about to slowly take a step, his foot
froze in place. An unearthly aura was filling the room.
So this is what a dhampir can do?
he thought.
This is the man called D?
So terrified it wouldn’t have been strange if his heart had stopped, too scared to
even shake, the mayor gazed at the Hunter’s gorgeous countenance.

“Answer me. What did you ask the Knights to do? What did they discover?”

“It was . . . ” the mayor panted. An incredibly powerful essence threatened to crush
his psyche. “It was . . . ”

At that very moment, the intercom on the mayor’s desk flashed red. With the series
of short, tension-filled buzzes, D’s unearthly aura dissipated almost immediately.
Wiping at his greasy sweat, the mayor grabbed the intercom microphone. “What is it?”

“This is the navigational control room. We’ve got a lone flying object approaching
from north-northwest at a range of forty miles. Speed is sixty miles per hour. The
object is—roughly the same size as our town. We’re trying to hail it, but haven’t
gotten an answer.”

“I see. I’ll be right there. Don’t forget to prepare for a counterstrike, just in
case.” When he switched off the intercom, the mayor had a relieved look on his face.
He felt more at ease having some unknown intruder threatening the town than he did
sitting in the same room with the young Hunter. “Guess I’ll be going, then,” the mayor
said without looking in D’s direction. Just then the intercom buzzed loudly again.
“What now?”

“The flying object has launched missiles. Three in all. They’re approaching now—twenty
seconds to impact.”

“Get the barrier up!”

“It was damaged by the magnetic field—repairs are still under way.”

“Begin firing antiballistic missiles and antiaircraft guns!” When the mayor raised
his now pale face once again, he saw no trace of D.

-

The Grim Reaper was winging his way toward the town. A trio of long, thin reapers,
actually, with sensors in their tips and flames gushing from the nozzles to their
rear. Taking into account their own speed and that of the town, they were constantly
adjusting their course to the target as they closed in on it at full speed.

-

At the sight of the Hunter in black who’d appeared without a sound, everyone in the
energy output control room forgot their approaching death and stood in a daze.

“Where’s the barrier projector?” D asked softly. Even knowing that death was drawing
ever nearer, he still managed to maintain his detached tone of voice.

The eyes of all the workers focused on one corner in the back. D headed over to the
silver cylinder. He was like a sprinting shadow. Saying not a word, the workers stepped
to either side. In the gap they left was a gaping hole where a riot of pale blue electromagnetic
waves danced chaotically. There was only one man who didn’t leave his post. Welding
gear in hand, his body unexpectedly flew backward into the room. Fire rose from the
protective plates on his chest. He’d just taken a blast of electromagnetism. Silently,
D stood between the man and the rough hole. His handsome face shone blue and cold.

“Don’t bother. Can’t turn off the electromagnetic wave output,” the man shouted as
he used his hand to beat out the flames on his chest. “There’s a hundred thousand
volts running through there. Without a protector on, we’re talking instant death.”

“Get in touch with the control room,” D ordered the frozen workers. “When you need
the barrier, I’ll send the current through.”

Asking no questions, and offering no arguments, the men nodded. One, who appeared
to be in charge, brought his mouth over to the microphone on his shoulder, and had
them patch him through to the navigational control room.

A slight tremor passed through the ship’s hull. The anti-aircraft fire had started.
While the town was equipped with antigravity generators and an electronic barrier,
their armaments were incredibly primitive. Aside from the Prometheus cannon—which,
in a cruel trick of fate, had been stripped down for inspection an hour earlier—they
had only twenty high-angle machine cannons with a two-inch bore and thirty antiballistic
missile launchers. Of course, they couldn’t be expected to produce their own shells
and missiles, so those were procured from flying merchants who specialized in dealing
with floating cities like theirs. Even so, such merchants were few and far between,
meeting the town only three times a year. If they ran out of goods they couldn’t produce
in the interim, a floating city had no choice but to find them on their own. Many
of the battles between two floating cities had resulted from this mutual need. But
the hostile actions of the unidentified flying object firing upon them were nothing
short of indiscriminate slaughter.

Prismatic flames spread across the sky, and black smoke enveloped the area. To increase
their destructive power, the shells for the machine cannons contained depleted uranium
and were armed with proximity fuses. Even if they failed to score a direct hit, they
would automatically detonate if their sensors detected a target within their destructive
range. Each time the big guns fired, the whole town rocked wildly.

The incoming missiles displayed the most astounding behavior. Like sentient beings,
they dodged shells and adjusted their speed as they rushed steadily closer. They seemed
to be mocking the town.

Minute course adjustments were nearly impossible for the town’s antiballistic missiles.
Every one that’d been launched left an ineffectual trail of white through the empty
sky as it disappeared.

A small, black shadow of death clung to the town. People looked out their windows
at the three points of approaching light. On every face was a despondent expression.
The thought of the fate those missiles held for them robbed them of their willpower.
Long spared the threats of the world below, the fragility of their peace had been
made evident by their enemy’s attack.