Vampires (11 page)

Felix's first two shots, like the deputy's, struck Roy. But while Kirk's hit Roy's chest, Felix's slammed into his forehead. And while Kirk's were .44 magnum hollowpoints, they were only lead. Felix's were nine-millimeter silver blessed by the Vicar of Christ on Earth and they tore half-inch-wide holes through the skull. Roy shrieked and smacked his hands over the wounds and fell writhing to the cement.

But Felix didn't see this. By the time Roy had fallen, Felix had already shot the old woman behind Adam twice, in the throat and the chest, had shot the small one on the crossbow once, in the stomach, and had put one shot each in the next three ghouls to emerge from the shadows: a high school teacher still wearing his shattered glasses, a middle-aged mother of three reported missing for two weeks, and a young drug dealer who waited too late one night to make a buy.

They were goons, still. All of them. Too recently dead to have thoughts or ideas or notions or sense of self. But they had always known hunger.

And now they remembered pain.

Searing, irredeemable agony shot through their wounds, wounds that would never heal. For a moment, the monsters forgot their prey, forgot the smell of blood, forgot their thirst. They thought only of the pain.

Felix strode forward during that instant, ejecting the clip with his right hand and snapping in a second with his left.

Then he worked a cartridge into the chamber, making all three actions appear, somehow, to be a single motion.

Like a robot, thought Cat at the time. Like a machine.

Felix paused in the center of the area lit by the two lanterns and briefly surveyed the tormented creatures surrounding him. Then he shot them some more. When the second clip was emptied and the third had replaced it, he stepped over to Cat.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice calm and unhurried.

And oddly kind, thought Cat, staring into those dead eyes.

Cat nodded.

“Can you get up and move?” asked Felix in the same tone.

Cat nodded again.

“Then let's do it,” suggested the gunman, holding out a hand to help. “Let's get out of here.”

Cat took the hand and pulled himself up. He still felt wobbly alter the pounding he had taken. But he was all right. Beside them Adam, who had been following it all, was also rising. The wound at his temple had stopped bleeding.

“C'mon, everybody,” called Felix in Jack's direction. “Let's move.”

Then he started firing again and for the next few seconds there were only the explosive sounds from his weapon and the raucous misery of his victims. The goons who had managed to drag themselves upright after the first two volleys were sent back to the floor, screaming and writhing and pounding at their wounds.

None approached the Team and only one other appeared from the shadows, a middle-aged man wearing farmer's overalls and a jagged gash from his left ear to left shoulder.

Felix shot him three times, twice in the chest, once in the head. He fell shrieking to the floor like the rest.

Jack, staring as transfixed as the others at this incredible display of cool destruction, managed to gather himself and everyone else up and get them toward the door while Felix guarded their rear, emptying clip after clip into the monsters.

“Okay, Felix!” he called as the door came open and the sunlight flooded the chamber. “Come along.”

Felix was in the middle of reloading. He paused, looked at his boss, nodded, and trotted toward the sunlight.

A few seconds later all of them, Jack, Cat, Adam, Felix, and the young deputy were standing in the sunlight beside Carl's winch. And amazingly, none were seriously hurt.

Incredible, thought Jack. Five minutes ago I thought we were all dead. And then, like everyone else, he just stood and stared at the gunman for a while.

Felix didn't seem to notice. He sat down on a curb and lit a cigarette and stared at a spot on the street between his feet.

Carl watched them watching Felix awhile.

“What happened?” he asked at last.

Jack looked at him, thought a minute. “Silver bullets,” he replied.

Carl smiled. “They worked?”

Cat nodded toward Felix. “They worked for him.”

“Did they kill 'em?” asked Carl excitedly.

The gunman surprised them all by answering.

“No,” he replied firmly, looking at Carl. “They didn't kill them.”

“Well, no,” conceded Jack after a moment. “But they sure as shit got their attention.”

And everyone who had been there laughed.

Except Felix.

“It hurts them, Carl,” added Adam excitedly. “It really hurts them!”

“It sure did that,” added the deputy, shaking his head and putting his own pistol back in its holster.

“That reminds me,” said Jack Crow, “thanks, deputy. What's your name again?”

“Kirk Thompson. Only I didn't do much.”

Cat smiled. “We'll get you some silver bullets.”

Kirk looked at the others. “Are they silver? Really silver?”

“Blessed by Holy Mother Church,” replied Adam.

“Reckon I could use some at that,” smiled the deputy.

“We could all use 'em,” Jack Crow said brusquely, “and we all will.” He lit a cigarette and announced a decision. “Carl, get everybody that goes inside a gun with silver bullets. And you, Adam, are gonna tote the extra crossbow if you're still sure you can handle one.”

“I'd be happy to demonstrate,” offered the priest confidently.

Jack gave him a wry smile. “I'll take your word for it, padre.” Then he turned to the others. "This is the new deal:

Cat, you're on the far right to do the detecting. Adam, you stand inside Cat next to me with the other crossbow. Then it'll be me and then Felix on my left. Cat, you tell us when they're coming. Felix'!! hold 'em off until I can shoot one, with Adam backing me up. Then we go straight out the door, with Felix holding the rest of 'em off until we can get to the sunlight. Nobody else shoots unless Felix or I tells them to."

He looked at the gunman, still sitting on the curb staring between his boots.

“That okay with you, Felix?”

Felix looked at him, nodded dully. “I'd like some more light,” he said calmly.

“We got more light, Carl?”

“I think there's one or two in the motorhome. I'll have to look.”

Jack shook his head. “We'll look. C'mon, Felix, let's... Hey! Hit the winch.”

All turned and followed Jack's gaze to the cable running from the winch to the warehouse door.

“It's stopped moving!” noticed Carl.

Jack tossed his cigarette angrily to the street. “Hell, yes, it's stopped moving. Did you expect the damn thing to stay caught forever while we stood around yappin'?”

But it hadn't gotten loose. Carl's winch dragged out the crossbow bolt still tangled in the monster's clothing. But the monster was dust.

“We killed it!” cried Cat, amazed. “Indoors! Without sunlight!”

“Yeah,” muttered Jack.

“I don't understand,” said the deputy. "You've never done this before? In the movies, they always..

“Forget the movies,” growled Jack. “They don't change into bats or wolves, either.”

“But stakes do kill them,” offered Adam.

“Yeah,” replied Jack, lighting another cigarette. He walked over and shifted the dusty clothes with a chain-mailed boot. “You know, we knew the stakes hurt 'em. I guess we just never managed to keep one on one long enough. Before, they always tore loose if we didn't get 'em out and burning pretty quick.”

“That,” suggested Cat with a smile toward Felix, “was before the Lone Ranger, here.”

Felix eyed him blankly. “Could be,” he said at last.

Jack laughed. “Damn well 'could be,' gunman. Those bullets keep 'em too miserable to get loose until it's too late.” He walked a fast circle around the dusty clothes, surveying them from all sides. Then he stopped and stared at the locals, still too scared to approach.

“Ha!” he said at last, clapping his hands together and smiling. “C'mon, Felix! Let's see about your light.”

“Hey, Cat,” snarled Carl suddenly, reaching down for the first-aid kit at his feet, “did you know you and the padre are bleeding?”

Cat grinned. “We assumed so. We were so popular.”

“All right, dammit!” snarled Carl after he had tended their minor wounds, “what the hell happened in there?”

Cat and Adam exchanged a look. “Well,” began Cat, “first Felix froze.”

And then they told Carl about Cat fixing the light and about the little fiend wrapping him up and about Adam getting whipped by the cable and then about Jack getting Cat loose just in time for the wave of ghouls and then Kirk came in and...

“And then Felix saved us,” he added with a smile. “And here we are.”

Carl snarled. “I thought you said Felix froze.”

Cat shrugged. “He unfroze.”

“And that's all it took?”

“You should have seen him.”

“Pretty good?”

Cat looked at him. “More than 'pretty good.' You ever see a spaghetti western?”

“That good?”

Cat and Adam exchanged another look. “Better,” they replied in unison.

Carl lit a cigarette and looked at them thoughtfully. “Fast draw?”

Adam shook his head. “More like a fast shot.”

Cat nodded. “Like a goddamn machine gun.”

“Hmm,” muttered Carl to himself. “Did he aim?”

Cat stared at him. “Did he what?”

Adam spoke up. “I know what Carl means. No. He didn't. He just sort of. . . pointed?”

Carl grinned and nodded. “I knew it! Only uses one hand, too, right?”

Adam nodded.

Carl laughed. “I knew it,” be repeated. “It's why he uses that tiny gun. It's the heaviest thing he can use with one hand.” He stood and carried the first-aid kit back to his chair by the winch controls. “We got ourselves a gunman.”

Jack Crow hadn't given a damn about the light. He had just wanted to get Felix alone. Oh, he went through the motions, finding two lanterns in their storage chest in the motorhome's bedroom. And he made sure they both worked, replacing the battery in one.

And then he got ready to talk.

Only, sitting there at the table with Felix blankly across from him, he didn't really know what to say. Or ask.

Finally, “You all right?” he blurted, too loudly.

Felix didn't startle. He just raised his eyes and looked at him.

“I mean,” Jack amended, “are you ready to go back in?”

Felix's voice was soft. “Sure.”

Jack still wasn't satisfied. “What woke you up in there?”

Felix thought a moment. “I'm not sure. The deputy's gun, I think.”

And they were quiet for a while.

“Think it'll happen to you again?” asked Crow gently.

Felix's smile was so sad it hurt Jack to look at it as he said, “No. That part's over.”

“Okay,” replied Jack gruffly. Because he didn't know what else to say.

At the last minute they decided to go with flares instead of more lanterns. Lanterns were a more steady light, but they couldn't figure out a safe way to carry them as far into the darkness as Felix wanted.

Only they didn't have any flares and they weren't at all sure the local cops would give them any.

Deputy Kirk Thompson was sure.

“I'll get your flares,” he said ominously and walked over to a patrol car.

They couldn't hear what he said to them. But they got the tone.

And they got their flares. The deputy had three dozen delivered to them within five minutes.

“So,” said Jack Crow as they assembled before the warehouse once more. “We're all set. Rock and roll!”

And as he led the Team inside he thought: Please, Felix! Don't fold on us again!

He didn't. Felix was, if anything, more impressive the second time. He was cool and calm and deadly accurate, and the closest monster to them was the one Jack picked to crossbow, Roy.

Roy was as big and strong as he looked. But not as strong as the winch. Rot with Felix continually, mercilessly, shooting him. By the time he'd been dragged to the sunlight, Roy had forgotten all about the stake through his chest. And then it was too late.

They waited five minutes and went in again and got another, as easily as the last. Then they did it again. And again and again and again. The crowd watching them began to grow as their success continued, some of the policemen going so far as to actually stand just behind Carl's winch to watch.

Carl ignored them. So did the others.

They always followed the same procedure. Jack led them in, then they fanned out on either side of him into position. Felix would light a flare, toss it way into the shadows at the edge of their lanterns, and begin to shoot everything that moved but the one Jack had picked to stake. After Jack made his shot, the others would fade back toward the door while Felix kept the rest at bay. They would all exit with the burning vampire. Then a sip of something cool, a quick puff on a cigarette, and back they'd go.

And then the vampires began to change.

There were only a handful left, most of them shot several times, and they weren't moving much. Some weren't even on their feet. Not dead, not nearly dead, but hurting.

And waking up.

It was the pain, decided Adam. The pain was shocking them back into consciousness after the zombie-limbo of death. Whatever, they were no longer the same. And their eyes were no longer just the blank thirst-stare. They were alert. And angry.

They found this out on their sixth trip inside the building. It started off just like the other times, Crow in first, followed by the others fanning to either side of him. There were no goons in sight, which wasn't especially unusual. But Cat's detector showed nothing approaching and that was strange.

Felix tossed a flare anyway, flinging it with a long side arm to avoid the low ceiling.

It landed on a vampire.

It was a young woman in her early thirties. She was wearing boots, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt advertising “Z Z Top's North American Tour.” Felix remembered that sweatshirt. He had put at least three silver bullets through it that day.

The woman had been lying there in the dust, unmoving, when the flare landed on her chest. She sprang to her feet, yelping and brushing wildly at the flame flickering from her sweatshirt. Then, once she was free of the fire, she stopped.

And looked at them.

And then she felt the bullet holes in her chest.

And then she looked right at Felix. Right at the gunman.

And then she let out an awful schreaking cry, like a satanic infant's tantrum, and ran straight at Felix, the source of her anguish.

Felix shot her twice more, without thinking. Both bullets struck her high in the chest, flipping her over backward. After she hit, she lay still.

“Good Lord,” whispered Cat harshly, “I think you killed her!”

“Does anybody remember how many shots it took?” asked Adam. “Felix?”

“Hold it, goddamniit! Cat! Anything else coming?”

Cat bent over his detector. “Not yet,” he replied.

“Okay, then,” Jack announced. "We can afford to wait a bit to see if she's really . .

She wasn't. The second wailing was even worse than the first. And her scrambling headlong charge for the gunman was even quicker. Felix's startled third shot was from the hip. It struck her in the left thigh and she cartwheeled forward onto her shoulder...

Then leapt back to her feet and came at him again, right at him, shrieking that shriek, and bounding on that shattered left thigh.

Their eyes had met before Felix managed to shoot her again, this time in the exact center of her pulsing throat.

She slammed backward into the dust, writhing and flinging that mad baby's cry all around her.

Jack made a quick decision. He stepped over in front of Felix and raised the crossbow.

“That tears it,” he barked gruffly. “We're taking this one.”

And they did. When next she rose, Jack's crossbow almost folded her in half.

But it held and the cable held and a few seconds later they were watching her burn just as all the rest had.

No one moved after the fire was out. They just stood there.

“She knew you,” cat said at last, looking at Felix. “She knew you were the one who'd hurt her.”

Felix took a long puff on his cigarette, nodded.

“Yes,” added Adam. “They are definitely waking up.”

“Let 'em,” snarled Jack Crow. He fixed the Team with a frosty stare. “It's too late for 'em. We just stay a little tighter, work a little faster, be a little more careful. We still got 'em.”

They were right. From then on, every ghoul Felix had previously shot would scream that insane wail and rush him as soon as they saw him. There was no doubt they recognized him. No doubt they hated him.

But Jack Crow was also right. It was too late. The system worked. It worked on zombies or vampires or any combination of the two. Felix's shooting was too quick. Jack's crossbow was too accurate.

The only trouble spot came toward the end. They were getting tired, with some four hours at it by then, and due for a mistake. The mistake was Felix's, and it was a beauty he dropped his gun during a charge.

First he slipped, in that awfully gooey stuff the monsters used for blood. It was a clear, viscous, odorless mucus that had been pouring from the wounds onto the cement and Felix made the mistake of stepping in it as he spun to shoot the third of the trio, which had rushed screaming out of the flare's light toward them. When he went down, Felix's right hand went out instinctively to catch himself and it went into another puddle of the junk and the pistol squirted out of his grip like a bar of soap.

Jack had already made his shot, the vampire already wriggling on the huge arrow, when it happened. He frantically fished for the pistol on his belt. Cat did the same and had actually managed to draw his pistol before Adam, calm and cool, stepped forward and fired his crossbow through the last monster's chest. It dropped like meat on a spit.

Seconds later they were out watching another fire while Carl toweled the clinging mess from Felix's hand and gun and everyone else exchanged proud grins with the young priest. It had been his only chance for action in hours and he had been flawless.

They felt good.

Nothing else even slowed them down. And only one thing actually frightened them again: going down into the basement.

The detectors said there were no more inside. Jack Crow believed them. They had already killed twenty-four and that was something like the third highest number Jack had ever seen in one place.

But they were still going to have to go down there and see for themselves.

And while they were sitting there trying to figure out the best way of going about it an old man wearing a faded pastor's collar started across the street toward them. They had noticed him before and ignored him. Just another one of the local biggies come to oversee.

But as he got closer, they could tell this was no bigshot. The knees to his slacks were worn through. The lining of his jacket was hanging loose on one side. And he looked like he hadn't shaved that white beard in a week.

He began to walk faster and faster as be approached them. He was carrying a piece of pipe in one hand, holding it in front of him like an offering. Jack had stood up to introduce himself, had even stuck out his hand to be shaken, in fact, when the old man swung the pipe at his head.

Jack half ducked but the pipe still banged him good on his left shoulder before glancing hard against his ear. Blood splattered from his ear and he reeled from the stunning ringing in his head and if he'd been alone the old man might have finished him off.

But he wasn't alone. The old man was down hard on the street with the deputy handcuffing him within three seconds. The next minutes were spent bandaging up Jack's ear and screaming at the local cops for an explanation as to just who in the hell let this crazy old fart in here, anyway?

That's just Old Vic, they were told.

Who?

Old Vic Jennings. He's just a crazy old coot lives down there by the railroad tracks. He's an Englishman. Uh, ya'll don't wanna press charges or nothing, do you?

Jack stood up and pointed to the bandage covering the left side of his head. “I sure as Hell do!”

The cops looked back and forth between each other, shrugged, and tried to explain that “there's kinda somewhat of a problem with that.”

Oh, really? Team Crow asked.

Jack looked down at Old Vic, who seemed delighted with all the attention. He was grinning a satisfied death's-head grin at Jack. The two men exchanged silent looks while the Team heard the song and dance about being able to arrest him, okay! We can arrest him easy. Only they couldn't put 'im in the jail on account of the jail being closed because of two prisoners we got down there got AIDS and we don't wanna risk no epidemic thing.

Jack was listening as he stared at the old man's grin and tried to keep from grinning back. He asked one question:

By whose order was the jail closed?

The mayor, he was told.

Jack nodded, told them to take the old man away anywhere they wanted-to the Hood County Jail, if necessary- but keep him away from Team Crow.

“Because,” he added, “we'll be finished here in another hour and I don't want anything to screw it up. Dig?”

They dug. They hauled Old Vic, still grinning, to a squad car. He had never, Jack suddenly realized, said a single word.

Didn't have to, thought Jack, finally letting himself smile. He got what he wanted, attention, without it.

Thirty minutes later, Jack and his gunman were ready to bit the warehouse basement. Just the two of them.

Jack had fussed and fretted over the choice but he couldn't think of another way to do it. He had to go; he was in charge. Felix had to go; he was too good. But what about backup?

Well, what about it? They were going after master vampires, the ones in charge, the ones who'd created the goons in the first place, and if they came across them in that narrow stairwell anything that was going to happen would crack too fast for anyone to stop it. Jack didn't believe the masters were down there-they were in that goddamned jail-but if they were they might very well wipe out the entire Team. This way there'd at least be somebody left to do it the old-fashioned way, with plastique.

And besides, he wasn't sure he wanted a lot of trigger-happy well-meaners shooting off pistols and crossbows past his head.

No. Just him and Felix would go down, with both halogen crosses blazing from their chests. Felix first.

Crow felt the last part deserved an explanation but Felix didn't need one. Felix didn't even raise an eyebrow. Gunman first made sense to him too. Then Jack tried to explain about master vampires, the real live movie types that could throw cars and move so fast they literally blurred, but he didn't think he had the gunman's attention.

“You're saying they're worse, right?” Felix interrupted at last, sounding irritated and bored.

Jack just nodded.

Felix nodded in turn. “I figured that,” he whispered harshly. “Now let's get on with it!”

They did.

The rich, rotten-sweet smell of death and decay rose up to them from the dark basement stairs through the harsh smoky halogen beams. Jack nodded one last time to Cat and Adam, who would wait there on the first-floor battleground for them. Then he touched Felix on the shoulder and the gunman started down the steps. There was no trouble on the way down, save for their occasional starts and jumps at some imagined movement at the edges of the shadows. The detector never beeped, their radios retained clear and crisp reception.

But it scared the hell out of both of them.

The stairwell was too goddamned narrow and the shadows too goddamned dark and the smell grew so strong they felt they could lean against it and their boots sounded harsh and rasping on the dusty steps and they couldn't help but notice the scores of other footprints besides their own. The basement was worse.

It was a crypt. Nine bodies in all-six townspeople and the three policemen who had gone inside to save them. Their bodies were rank and swollen, unevenly, grotesquely bloated. And there were maggots. Thousands of maggots swarming in the chests.

“How could they rise up after that?” gasped Felix, staring at the maggots.

Jack shook his head. “I don't know. But they do. Every time. Unless we do this right.” He put down his crossbow and reached back for the ax strapped across his shoulders.. “Or unless I do, rather. You don't have to do anything. But pay attention to what I do. Okay?”

Felix nodded, moving over against a bare wall.

Jack steeled himself. Get hard, dammit! he screamed inwardly. But it didn't work. It didn't help. Not even the hatred of the vampires made it any easier. It never did.

But he did it. He chopped the heads off and put them in one pile and then he dragged the torsos into another heap' and then he poured gasoline on both piles and set them alight.:

They burned like dry, dead leaves.

Jack and Felix hunkered down in one corner underneath the cloud of smoke to breathe.