Tale of the Dead Town (3 page)

“You do it.”

As the gorgeous young man leaned over the bed just as indifferent as he was before,
Pluto VIII asked him, “What gives, bucko? You risk your life saving a young lady and
then you don’t even wanna see if she’s getting better? What, is the mayor’s daughter
so all-fired important?”

“This is business.”

Pluto VIII had no way of knowing that it was nothing short of a miracle for D to answer
such a contentious question. With an indignant look on his face matching that of the
nearby physician, the biker pushed his way through the doorway. “Damn, I don’t believe
your nerve,” he cursed. Spittle flew from his lips. “Do you
really
know how she’s doing? She’s got level three radiation poisoning to her speech center,
and just as much damage to her sense of hearing to boot. And neither of them can be
fixed. She’s got some slight burns on her skin, too, but supplies of artificial skin
are limited and, since it’s not life-threatening, they’ll leave her the way she is.
How’s that strike you? She’s at the tender age where girls look up at the stars and
weep, and now she’s gonna have to carry the memory of watching her folks get eaten
alive, her body is dotted with burns, and to top everything off she can’t freakin’
talk or hear no more.”

More than the tragic details of what was essentially the utter ruin of that young
woman, it was Pluto VIII’s righteous indignation that made the mayor and Dr. Tsurugi
lower their eyes.

D quietly replied, “I listened to what you had to say. Now get out.”

-

III

-

Once the clamorous Pluto VIII had been pulled away from the room by the mayor and
four guards, D looked down at Laura’s face. Vacant as her gaze was, her eyes were
still invested with a strange vitality, and they suddenly came into focus. The cohesive
will she’d kept hidden tinged her eyes red. The will of a Noble. A breath howled out
of her mouth. Like the corrupting winds gusting through the gates of Hell.

“What did you come here for?” she asked. Her eyes practically dripped venom as they
stabbed back at D’s. Laura’s lips warped. Something could be seen glistening between
her lips and overly active tongue. Canine teeth. Once again Laura said, “What are
you here for?”

“Who defiled you?” asked D.

“Defiled me?” The girl’s lips twisted into a grin. “To keep feeling the pleasure I’ve
known, I wish I could be defiled night and day. What are you? I know you’re not just
an ordinary traveler. We don’t get many folks around here who use words like defile.”

“What time will he be here?”

“Well, now . . . Suppose you ask him yourself?” Her pleased expression suddenly stiffened.
All the evil and rapture was stripped away like a thin veneer, and for a brief moment
an innocent expression befitting a slumbering girl of eighteen skimmed across her
face. Then, once again her features became as expressionless as paraffin. Dawn had
come at last to the Great Northern Plains.

D raised his left hand and placed it on the young woman’s forehead. “Exactly who or
what attacked you?”

Consciousness returned to her cadaverous face. “I don’t . . . know. Eyes, two red
eyes . . . getting closer . . . but it’s . . . ”

“Is it someone from town?” asked D.

“I don’t know . . . ”

“When were you attacked?”

“Three weeks ago . . . in the park . . . ” Laura answered slowly. “It was pitch black
. . . Just those burning eyes . . . ”

“When will he come next?”

“Oh . . . tonight . . . tonight . . . ” Laura’s body snapped tight, like a giant steel
spring had suddenly formed inside her. The blankets flew off her with the force of
it. She let out what sounded like a death rattle, the tongue lolled out of her mouth,
and then her body began to rise in the most fascinating way. This paranormal phenomenon
often occurred when a victim’s dependency to the Nobility was pitted against some
power bent on destroying that bond. Hunters frequently had an opportunity to observe
this behavior, so D’s expression didn’t change a whit. But then, this young man’s
expression probably wouldn’t show shock in a million years.

“Looks like that’s all we’ll be getting,” said a hoarse voice that came from between
the young woman’s brow and the hand that rested against it. “The girl doesn’t know
anything aside from what she’s told us. Guess we’ll have to ask her little friend
after all.”

When the Hunter’s hand was removed, Laura crashed back down onto the bed. Waiting
until light as blue as water speared in through the window, D left the room. The mayor
was waiting for him outside.

“Learned something in there, did you?” said Mayor Ming. He demonstrated the mentality
of those who lived out on the Frontier by not asking the Hunter if he could save her
or not.

The fact of the matter was, when a vampire with a victim in the works learned that
a Hunter had come for him or her, they’d make themselves scarce unless the victim
was especially dear to them. After that, it was all just a matter of time. The future
of that victim might vary depending on how many times he or she’d been bitten, and
how much blood had been taken. There were some who could go on to live a normal life
even after five fateful visits to their bedroom—though they usually became social
outcasts. But there were also some young ladies whose skin turned to pale paraffin
from a single cursed kiss, and they’d lie in bed forever waiting for their caller
to come again, never aging another day. And then one day a victim’s gray-haired grandchildren
and great-grandchildren would suddenly see her limbs shrivel like an old mummy’s and
know that somewhere out in the wide world the accursed Noble had finally met his fate.
The question was, just how long would that take? How many living dead were still out
there, sustained by nothing but moonlight, hiding in the corner of some rotting, dusty
ruin, their kith and kin all long since dead? Time wasn’t on the side of those who
walked in the light of day.

“Tonight, we’ll be having a visitor,” D told the mayor.

“Oh, well that’s just—”

“Is your daughter the only victim?”

The mayor nodded. “So far. But as long as whoever did this is still out there, that
number could swell until it includes every one of us.”

“I’d like you to prepare something for me,” D said as he looked to the blue sky beyond
the window.

“Just name it. If it’s a room you need, we’ve already prepared your accommodations.”

“No, I’d like a map of your town and data on all the residents,” said D. “Also, I
need to know everywhere the town has gone since it started its journey, and what destinations
are set for the future.”

“Understood,” said the mayor.

“Where will my quarters be?”

“I’ll show you the way.”

“No need to do that,” the Hunter replied.

“It’s a single family house near the park. A bit old, perhaps, but it’s made of wood.
It’s located . . .” After the mayor finished relating the directions, he pushed down
on the grip of his cane with both hands and muttered, “It’d be nice if we could get
this all settled tonight.”

“Where was your daughter attacked?” D asked.

“In a vacant house over by the park. Didn’t find anything there when we checked it
out, though. It’s not far from the house we have for you, either.”

D asked for the location, and the mayor gave it to him.

Then D went outside. The wind had died down. Only its whistling remained. There must’ve
been a device somewhere in town for projecting a shield over the entire structure.
The town’s defenses against the harsh forces of nature were indeed perfect. Blue light
made the Hunter stand out starkly as he went down the street. The shadow he cast on
the ground was faint. That was a dhampir’s lot. There was no sign of the living in
the residential sector. For the tranquil hours of night, people became like breathing
corpses.

Up ahead, the Hunter could see a tiny point of light. A bit of warmth beckoning to
the dawn’s first light. A hospital. D walked past it without saying a word. He didn’t
seem to be looking at the signs that marked each street. His pace was like the wind.

After about twenty minutes he was out of the residential section, and he stopped just
as the trees of the park came into view. To his right was a row of half-cylindrical
buildings—one of them was his destination. That was where young Laura had been attacked.
The mayor had told him all of the buildings were vacant. At first, that’d only been
true for the building in question, but, after the incident involving Laura, the families
living nearby had requested other quarters and moved out. Dilapidation was already
creeping up on the structures.

The house on the end was the only one shut tight by poles and locks. The fact that
it’d been sealed with heavy poles instead of ordinary planks made it clear how panicked
the people were. And there were five locks on the door—all electronic.

D reached for the locks. The pendant at his breast gave off a blue light, and, at
the mere touch of his pale fingertips, the locks dropped to his feet. His fingers
closed on the poles, which had been fixed in a gigantic X. The poles of unmilled wood
were over eight inches in diameter and had been riveted in place. D’s hand wouldn’t
wrap even halfway around one. It didn’t look like there’d be any way for him to get
a good grip on them. But his fingertips sank into the bark. His left hand tore both
poles free with one tug.

Pushing his way past a door that’d lost its paint in the same crisscrossing shape,
D headed inside. A stench pervaded the place. It was the kind of stink that called
to mind colors—colors beyond counting. And each of them painted its own repulsive
image. As if something ominous beyond telling was drifting through the dilapidated
house.

Though the windows were all boarded up, D casually advanced down the dark hallway,
coming to the room where they’d found Laura. As the mayor had said, they’d performed
an exhaustive search, and anything that wasn’t nailed down had been taken out of the
room. There were no tables, chairs, or doors here. D’s unconcerned eyes moved ever
so slightly as he stood in the center of the room.

He stepped out into the hall without making a sound. At the end of another hall that
ran perpendicular to the first he could see the door to the next room. A shadow tumbled
through the doorway. It was like a stain of indeterminate shape. Its contours shifted
like seaweed underwater, and the center of it eddied. Then it stood up. A pair of
legs were visible. A head and torso were vaguely discernible. It was a human wrapped
in some kind of protective membrane. What on earth was it doing here?

D advanced slowly.

The stain didn’t move. Its hands and feet changed shape from one moment to the next,
yet their respective functions remained clear.

“What are you?” D asked softly. Though his tone was quiet, it had a ring to it that
made it clear his questions weren’t to be left unanswered, much less ignored. “What
are you doing here? Answer me.”

Swaying, the stain charged at him. It was a narrow hallway. D had no way of avoiding
it. His right hand went for the longsword on his back—and dead ahead of him, his foe
waved its arm. A black disk zipped toward D’s face.

Narrowly ducking his head, D drew his longsword. Seeming to have some special insight
into the situation, the Hunter didn’t use his unsheathed weapon to parry the disk,
but slashed with the blade from ground to sky. His foe had already halted its charge,
and now a terrific white light flashed through its crotch. From the bottom up, his
foe was bisected. And yet, aside from a slight ripple that ran through its whole body,
the shifting shadow was unchanged. An indescribable sound echoed behind it. Regardless,
D advanced.

Without making a sound, the shadow backed against the wall. It certainly seemed just
like a real shadow, because its clearly three-dimensional form abruptly lost its depth
and became perfectly flat before being completely and silently absorbed by the wall.
D stood before the wall without saying a word. The gray surface of the tensile plastic
was glowing faintly. That was the aftereffect of molecular intangibility—the ability
to pass through walls without resistance. The process of altering cellular structure
and passing through the molecules of some barrier caused subtle changes in radioactive
isotopes. That same ability had probably allowed the shadow to evade the blow from
D’s sword.

Doing an about-face, D ran his eyes across either side of the hallway. The disk had
vanished. There were no signs it’d hit anything, either.

D pushed open the same door the shadow had come from. It appeared to be a laboratory
that’d been sealed in faint darkness. The walls were covered with all sorts of medicines,
and the lab table bolted to the floor was covered with burn marks and was heavily
discolored by stains. He noticed signs that some sort of mechanical device had been
removed.

D came to a halt in the center of the room. There were shields over the windows. What
kind of experiments had been performed here in the darkness, sealed away from the
light? There was something extremely tragic about the place.

This was where the intruder had come from. Had it been living in here? Or had it slipped
in before D arrived, searching for something? Probably the latter. In which case,
it would be relatively easy to discover who it was. Five hundred people lived in this
town. Finding the intruder among that many people wouldn’t be impossible.

D went outside. There was something in this house. But he couldn’t put his finger
on what exactly it was. The sunlight gracing the world grew whiter. D came to a halt
at the door. A black cloud was moving down the street. A mass of people. A mob. It
almost looked like every person in town was there. The intense hostility and fear
in their eyes made it plain they were fully aware of D’s true nature.

D calmly made his way to the street. A black wall of a man suddenly loomed before
him. He must’ve been about six foot eight and weighed around three hundred and thirty
pounds. The giant had pectorals so wide and thick they looked like scales off a greater
fire dragon. Leaving about three feet between them, D looked up at the man.