The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (7 page)

"Who is it?" asked a male voice, a low voice that fit the big man in the bathrobe.

"Hi, my name is Bertrand Allan. You saw me go through your backyard earlier this evening." Bertrand's ears burned with his embarrassment. What could this conversation possibly accomplish?

"I'm armed. You and your friends stay away. I know what you are and I'll shoot the first bastards who crosses my doorstep."

"Jesus Christ, dude." Bertrand backed up a step. "All I wanted to ask was when the cops left, 'cause it's totally weird that they're gone and there's nothing on the news. I mean, it's as if your neighbor's murder never happened." Bertrand backed down the stairs now. This had been a bad idea, and the sooner he got away from this nutbar, the better.

"Wait a second," the voice whispered over the intercom.

Nothing happened for a pregnant minute, and Bertrand backed farther away from the steps of the house. Finally the door opened, and the same unshaven man—the brown bathrobe wrapped around his wide waist—brandished a shotgun at Bertrand. "Say Jesus's name again."

Bertrand considered telling him where to go, but the shotgun riveted his attention. Fear can make people do crazy things, and this man looked terrified, his eyes wide, shifting left to right to check for threats in the street.

"Jesus Christ," Bertrand said. "Has the world gone mad?"

"Make the sign of the cross."

"Come on, dude. I just want to go home."

"Make the sign of the cross or I'll blow you away right now!"

There's no arguing with fear. Bertrand had to think to remember the routines of his childhood, before his parents had decided that church wasn't essential to his upbringing.

"In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Look, can I go now. I'm really, really sorry I bothered you. I just thought maybe the police had said something to you."

The gun didn't waver but the man's face relaxed a bit.

"Like why they're covering up a murder."

"Yeah. Like that."

"You better come in."

"No." Bertrand stepped back, preparing to turn and run.

"You'll never make it home." The man raised the shotgun. "I'm your only chance. Get in here now before she comes around and kills us both."

"Who?"

"Rose. My neighbor, Rose. Now get in here, quick!" The man looked up and down the street in panic, as if a pack of wolves might come dashing along, hunting the unwary.

His fear was infectious. Bertrand looked up and down, but even though the street was empty, the sounds of the city seemed even more pronounced. Distant sirens, shouts and running feet. Was that a scream a few blocks away? Bertrand took a deep breath and hurried up the stairs in into the man's house. Oddly, despite the gun and the craziness, it seemed safer than walking home in the dark.

Bertrand placed his hand to his stomach, hiding the bulge of the hunting knife in his shirt. Not that a knife would be much help against a crazy man with a shotgun, but it was the last option for Bertrand if things got violent.

The big man slammed the door, leaving them in darkness alleviated only by streetlight washing in through the living room windows, turning furniture into shadows.

"What's your name again?" The shotgun was leveled at Bertrand's chest.

"Dude, please put the gun down, okay. My name's Bertrand Allan, and I'm not the Chicago Ripper." Bertrand held up one hand—palm out in surrender—and hoped that the man wouldn't notice that his other hand was over his stomach.

"Chicago Ripper?" The man gave a derisive snort. "You believe that crap? This way, quick." He waved the gun down the hall. "We have to get into the shelter."

"No." Bertrand backed up a step into the living room, his heart really pounding now. He would have to fight. "No way. You're crazy."

"I'm trying to save your life. We're in danger every minute we're up here, but Rose doesn't know about the shelter. We've got to lock ourselves in until morning and then I swear by God I'll let you go."

Running feet on the sidewalk outside and a scream forced them both to turn to the bow window. A dark figure ran past, closely followed by several more.

"What the hell is going on?" Bertrand forgot about his knife as he stepped toward the window, pulling aside the sheer curtain to get a better look at the pursuit.

"I'll leave you to die if you don't come now."

The man backed down the hallway, opening a door. Pale light leaked up a set of stairs. Bertrand considered his options: run into the street to try and help someone who was being chased by thugs and was probably three blocks away by now, or follow the crazy man with the shotgun into his basement. There was no point in trying to run to the rescue tonight, because he could never catch those people, and even if he did, what could he do against several assailants, even with his knife? Besides, Bertrand craved information and this strange man knew something. "Okay, I'll go to the shelter or whatever, but stop pointing the gun at me, and at least tell me your name."

"Thomas, Thomas Nolan, and I'm sorry but you have to pass the human test before I trust you. Don't worry, it's nothing weird. You go first."

Bertrand headed down the stairs, finding a basement from the seventies lit only by a couple of nightlights, one plugged into a socket above a wet bar, another at the bottom of the stairs. The wood paneling, shag carpet and bar stools in front of the Formica counter all looked new, even though they must be forty years old. Someone had taken very good care of this house. The couch and an armchair were squared and small, designed for the healthier backsides of the twentieth century rather than the large behinds of the twenty-first century.

Nolan moved past Bertrand to a fridge against the wall behind the bar. He gave it a mighty shove and it rolled to one side, revealing more paneling from the seventies, but he placed the flat of his hand against the wood and simply slid it aside. A door that could rival a bank vault was hidden behind, except that it looked homemade, welded in the back of a shop or a garage and brush-painted gray. Nolan pushed on it—there was no handle—and the heavy door swung inward, allowing fluorescent light to spill out. Nolan waved the shotgun at Bertrand."Get inside."

Bertrand found a room not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Narrow couches ran along each wall, and a small beer fridge sat between them at the far end, above it a very modern flat-screen was tuned to CNN, but the mute was on. Racked guns occupied every available space on the walls above the couches. There were shotguns, handguns and full-auto assault rifles. Uh oh. Maybe the guy was totally crazy.

"Help yourself to a beer and grab a seat."

Beer. God, he needed one, and if he was going to die he didn't have to worry about losing weight. Bertrand headed straight for the little fridge and found it full of Budweiser. He pulled two cold cans out and turned to find Nolan shoving the door closed with his shoulder—a door that looked about two feet thick. "What the hell is this place?"

"Bomb shelter. Three-foot thick concrete walls, built down here around the Cuban missile crisis by the guy who owned the house before me." Nolan pushed four heavy bolts—as thick as baseball bats—straight into a concrete wall. "I always thought it was funny, a good man-cave and all. Kept it a secret from everybody but Stan 'cause of the gun collection."

Nolan turned, putting his back to the door and drawing a heavy breath, the shotgun again pointing a Bertrand. "Have a drink. You can put mine down there." He nodded down at a little end table by the right side couch.

Bertrand popped open his beer and took a long drink, relishing in the freedom from guilt about his waistline. Today, he truly deserved alcohol.

Nolan watched him drink for a full ten seconds and sighed with relief.

"Thank God. You're human." He slumped down on the couch, resting the shotgun across his knees, reaching for his beer but still keeping a close eye on Bertrand, who took a seat on the opposite couch.

"Why the hell were you waving a shotgun at me?" Bertrand took a sip of his beer, sensing his own heart rate calming now that the shotgun wasn't pointed at his chest.

"You can't trust anyone." Nolan took a big gulp and wiped sweat from his brow.

Now that they were under the twin fluorescent bulbs, it was obvious that Nolan was in his early sixties, the stubble of his beard firmly gray, although his military cut hair was still salt-and-pepper on a thick head. His belly pushed at the draw strings of the bathrobe, barely allowing it to close.

Bertrand took a sip of his beer. "Who are you so afraid of, and what do you mean I'm human. Of course I'm human. What did you think I was, a space alien?"

Nolan finished his beer in one long series of gulps and crushed the can in his hand, tossing it aside into a garbage can at the end of his couch.

"A blood drinker." He heaved up his bulk and grabbed another beer from the fridge.

"What, like a vampire? You've got to be kidding me."

"Buddy, these stories about the Chicago Ripper, they're all bullshit to hide the fact that there are blood drinkers out there—not vampires, not like the movies—blood drinkers."

"Well what the frig is the difference?"

"These are real." Nolan slumped down on his couch and snapped open the beer. "They don't have fangs or weird shit like that. They use knives to open up your jugular, and they suck like crazy as you spew blood, until you've bled out."

"How do you know this?" Bertrand leaned forward, thinking about the blood on Needleman's living-room floor and the chunk cut out of the murdered man's neck.

"Stan's wife got snatched by this so-called Chicago Ripper two weeks ago, only there was three of them. We saw them grab her. Stan and I were having a beer right up there on my front porch, and we see's Rose walking along the sidewalk on her way back from her bridge club. Suddenly a van just shoots up and the side door opens, and there's like three men in there, and they just grab her and haul her into the van and take off."

"Are you sure it was men. Could it have been three women dressed like men? It was dark wasn't it?" Bertrand was thinking about Jeffery's neighbor, the geek who came home with four hot women and disappeared.

"They were men. The interior light of the van was on and I tell you they were men. The police said it was the Chicago Ripper—you ever hear of the news talking about the Chicago Rippers?"

"No. So are you saying they killed your neighbor—is that the Stan guy you were talking about—they killed his wife and then him?"

Nolan took a big drink. "Nope," he said, wiping foam from his mouth. "It was Rose who did Stan tonight."

"What the ... ? How do you know?"

"I saw it, goddammit! I was right out back there." He pointed to the ceiling with the shotgun. "I was just coming out to put some burgers on the barbecue for a late-night snack, and I heard the glass break over at Stan's. You've seen that little fence between us, right? We're good neighbors, both did tours in 'Nam just a couple of years apart. So's I go over near the fence thinking I'm gonna catch a burglar on his way out with the TV. I had my Glock with me, so I figured I was ready. Then I hear Stan screaming, so I hop the fence and I'm going up the back steps and there she is, putting a knife to him as if she's a combat veteran—and I've seen combat. I heard you guys coming and split, but I tell you I haven't seen blood spray like that since 'Nam."

"Holy shit! What did the cops say?"

Nolan shook his head. "I don't talk to them no more. Don't you get it? They're in on it, man. Look what happened to Rose. Come on, think about it: Stan and I call the cops with this cockamamie story about his old lady being kidnapped and they took forty minutes to get here. They took our statements like it was a noise complaint and told us it was the M.O. of the Chicago Ripper. They didn't even blink when we said there were three of them. They were brushing us off over a frigging kidnapping! Just a quick 'We're sorry but it's unlikely we'll catch them and you'll never see your wife again' before they left. I tell you, if I were a cop and a couple of guys gave me such a bullshit story, I'd have turned their lives upside down. I'd have sworn the murderers were standing right in front of me putting on a good act with a stupid story, but instead they just left after half an hour. For Christ's sake, it took them longer than that to get here!"

"But they came tonight. I mean there was crime scene processing and all going on while Joyce and I were giving our statements. And we did have to give signed statements."

"Since when do the cops fix broken windows and put
For Sale
signs up on crime scenes."

It was Bertrand's turn to take a long drink of his beer, finishing the can while he thought about the reluctance of the police to worry about Needleman or Jeff's neighbor, even with the bloodstains.

"It's just so crazy," Bertrand finally said. "I mean, why would they be in on it? What would the cops get for helping, well, these freaky blood drinkers you're talking about. Is this all some weird cult?"

Nolan heaved up and went over to the fridge to grab a beer for Bertrand. "I don't know what's going on, man. But I can tell you this: something is going on—something really big. And I know that you can't trust the cops, and you can't trust the government and you can't trust your neighbors."

"What can we do, though?"

Nolan passed him the beer. "We sit tight 'till morning. I don't know if they can come out in daylight and all, but all the crazy stuff so far is happening after dark. I came to get you only because I didn't want you cut right on my front doorstep. I don't go out after dark anymore. In fact, I'm not leaving this room till sun up and neither should you."

Bertrand thought about the trip back, about the chaos that was outside. Here he was safe and there was beer. He'd leave at dawn.

Warm sun spilled into the front hall when Nolan opened his front door, still in his bathrobe and still holding a shotgun, although it no longer pointed at Bertrand.

"I'm starting a blog about this, calling it 'My Undead Neighbor,'" Nolan said. "You should follow it, and maybe you can guest post about your neighbor. And listen, don't go out at night again, all right?"