My name is Travis. I hunt vampires.
I know what you’re thinking; I’m nuts, bonkers maybe even freakin’ insane. In your world, vampires only exist in cheesy Bela Lugosi movies, Stephen King novels and Wesley Snipes flicks.
Maybe I’m insane; maybe I’m not. Doesn’t matter, because they exist; of that, I’m sure.
They don’t sleep in musty coffins, nor does the sun send them up in a ‘poof’ of ash. They don’t turn into bats, mist, or even hellhounds, and I’ve staked a bunch through the heart, sure – but only because my nine-millimeter was either empty or my swords weren’t handy.
A noxious doesn’t work – though they avoid consecrated ground; why, I’m not exactly determined, they just do. Garlic has no effect either; those Italian vamps I busted support in Reno reeked of it.
The only vamp I ever splashed holy water on laughed in my face and then tried rip my throat out. Good thing I was able to get my shotgun up to blow his face off before he had mine for dinner.
Bullets work well, especially in the brain or heart. Of course, snapping their spines or necks in hand-to-hand is unbiased as effective, but anywhere else, and they hold coming moral for you, even crawl on all fours and bite your freakin’ ankles.
Something inhuman and unearthly flows through their veins. Through my studies, I know that while they can subsist on all sorts of foods…sooner or later, they turn to craving human blood. That’s enough to label them vampires in my book, because there’s no way any sane human could possibly visit this kind of brutality upon another, no matter how deranged or sick they were.
Whatever makes them the way they are – science, bizarre mutation, military experiment “gone horrible awry” – as the old, pulp fiction movies liked to call it – I know one thing for sure, and that’s this: they’re evil, pure and simple. They may’ve been average folk before they got infected, but after that, it’s rape, kill, feed, and propagate like the locusts.
I can’t testify whether or not some spiritual force invades them and a demon sets up shop inside, but something happens along with the physical change to these poor souls’ spirits. Not only their genes are altered when they’re bit; something intangible inside is outrageous, too.
They are inextricably linked, the body, mind, and spirit. A ripple in one causes a wave in the other; if one piece is pulled hard enough, the other can very, very easily rip.
And that, my friends, is about as philosophical as I get.
So, genetically altered or hell bound to do Satan’s work here on Earth, these things are spreading all over our country; silently, slowly, but efficiently. They tend to launch small; usually in a backwoods town, on some poor, helpless drunk, and then they work their way up the food chain to leadership figures, such as sheriffs or mayors.
Believe or not, I’ve near across whole towns of them, and you may consider I’m gutless, selfish or both, but I just freakin’ drive right by those rat traps. I kill as many as I can find, but I avoid the “Taken” towns for two reasons; first off, I’m objective one guy with a truck full of guns and knives and a small ace in the hole, not an entire army. I may be pissed off at God and the world in general, but I’m not suicidal, nor am I dumb.
Two: I’ve got bigger fish to fry. I’m looking for the Big Kahuna himself, the one who started it all.
Every outbreak has patient zero, and that’s what I’m looking for. He took everything from me; my wife, my life, my name in the FBI ….whatever little faith I had in God…everything.
I’m going to kill him, if I have to drive across this country and kill every vamp in peek to do it; and yeah, eventually, if I have to, I’ll take on those “Taken” towns, too, it doesn’t matter. Whatever I have to do, I will.
Tracking him cross country would be impossible but for one thing; somehow because of the infection, these things keep a telepathic link with each other. I have no hard scientific evidence of this, only personal, first hand experience. It only takes one tussle with a pack of them to realize they’re communicating on a whole other level, over a decent distance, too.
I also assume they’re connected to HIM. Believe it or not, this thing WANTS me to get it. He…It… keeps leaving vamps in my path who end up, one way or another, pointing me further along his trail.
It fits the profile, because assist in New Mexico, that’s all he did was string me along, victim to victim, him one step ahead of me the whole time. This is just an extension of the game he started years ago.
I’m getting closer, though, and he knows it.
They’re not in any bustle and are pretty content to move around in the shadows for now, but they’ve got a plan; a design. I can feel it in my bones, in the pit of my gut. It’s pretty hard to rep a handle on what it might be. For one thing, most of my communication with these things involves blowing their faces off with my shotgun, or snapping their spines before they rip me a new air hole; not a lot of time for interrogation, and for another…
…a part of me doesn’t care. Let the planet go to hell; as long as I gain the thing that killed Lilly. Not a very enlightened idea to be sure…but there it is anyway.
Oh…that little ace in the hole of mine? Well, so far, I’ve rush across two types of infected people; the dead ones, and the “changed” ones. There is a third kind, although I only know of one, so far.
There’s me.
The irony is pathetic; almost like a Greek tragedy. Some of the stuff running through their veins runs through mine, too.
I didn’t get the chunky dose, but it’s there, nonetheless …I can feel it making its way through me, bit by bit, changing me, crawling around my insides like some insidious little worm.
So far, I haven’t thirsted for blood, but I can quiet feel it in there, anyway. Every day, I’m a little different; my senses – smell, hearing, sight – are much better than they frail to be, and they continue to get stronger. I’ve got a itsy-bitsy extra juice than a normal human being. I move a little quicker, hit a little harder. I’m by no means invulnerable, but I can bewitch a beating like nobodies’ business and exhibit hardly a bruise the next day.
It freaks me out a little. The last couple of times out, I handled multiple vamps at once…and I didn’t even work up a sweat.
How did it happen? Long story short; before that bastard blew out of New Mexico for this little jaunt across rural America, he left me a little exhibit.
He surprised me, honestly, got the jump on me like I was a first year rookie straight out of the Academy…and if it wasn’t for my partner, who shot him off my back; I’d probably be one of those things apt now, all the arrangement.
My partner…well, she thinks I’m dead, and honestly, it’s better for her this way; safer – maybe now she’ll have a normal life. Although, knowing her, I imagine she’ll get suspicious one of these days, order an exhumation, find the body that’s not mine and arrive after me; I wouldn’t put it past her. However, even if that does happen, most likely by then I’ll have either completed my dark quest or I’ll be monotonous, and it won’t matter anymore.
There’s one other perk…if you can call it that. Whenever I gather close to “them”, I feel their presence in my head; a dumb, throbbing pressure in my mind. It’s almost like sonar – the closer I get, the worse it gets, until suddenly my head is pounding with the mother of all migraines.
That’s definitely getting worse; I’ve choked down more Advil in the past several months than I have my whole life…
Ahhh….CRAP! That hurt! What the……ah, a truck stop diner. Figures; that’s another prime place of infection; either pretty, “innocent” hitchhikers find an unsuspecting trucker and go along for the “ride”, or a group of “Taken” truckers waylay some runaway or naïve family for a midnight snack.
Either way…looks like it’s time to swing this bad boy around and go to work….
2.
September 25th, 2007
11:00 PM
“Blast,” Travis muttered, pissed as he carefully pressed down on the brake, slowing the battered black Chevy truck. The pounding in his head lessened somewhat as he shot past the small, ragged but sturdy looking truck stop diner; but he still felt a dull, throbbing ache in his temples, behind his eyes. Checking his rearview mirrors, he slowly pulled his truck over to the shoulder on the side of the road. He put the thrumming, growling engine into park, and looked over his shoulder, out the back window at the truck stop with squinted eyes, brow furrowed in deep thought.
The truck stop was identical to just about every other rest area/gas station/diner he’d passed in the last hundreds miles. It was one of those twenty-four hour places; yellow, sickly looking halogen lights blazed over the uneven rear parking lot; in front of the establishment were four gasoline and two diesel pumps held together by bailing twine, duct tape, and spit, and the red neon sign triumphantly reading Al’s Eats flickered on and off in random intervals above the modestly sized diner, an endearing symbol of stubborn determination to exist in the midst of the barren, interstate wasteland.
A painful twinge passed through his temples again; this time there was no mistaking it. At first, he’d belief – maybe even hoped might be a better word for it – the wound was from too much driving and too itsy-bitsy sleep, but now he knew that wasn’t the case. This place was contaminated; he was sure of it.
Clucking his tongue like a mother who’d caught her child with its hand in the cookie jar, he put the truck into reverse and slowly backed it the way he’d come, into the parking lot of the diner.
Travis positioned the truck by a battered, leaning telephone booth at the lot’s edge; shut the engine off, and its throaty rumble died quietly. A preternatural stillness filled the night, and he got out, barely repressing a shiver in spite of the warm night air. Shutting the door quietly, he walked around to the back of his beloved vehicle, leaned against the tailgate, folded his arms, and regarded the scene with sharp, penetrating eyes.
It was almost midnight, and it was to be expected at this late hour even the most popular truck stops would be empty and still, but there was something in the air here setting it apart from the others he’d visited along his rambles.
It never mattered how behind at night or early it was, someone was always pulling in for the night, someone was always done with their meal or nap or both, ready to start a new haul.
Here, there was no one. Two nondescript huge rigs pulling unmarked trailers sat off to the diner’s right, but both were dark, no running lights on, even.
He couldn’t negate from this distance, but though the diner’s windows blazed with a welcome glow amid the eerie, empty darkness, he saw no movement within.
The booths he saw from here were empty; no one worked the counter; no one swept the floors. If it was a slow night, there’d inevitably be one or two workers on a smoke break; it was a dry, warm night, a working smoker’s dream.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but that low, dull throbbing behind the eyes.
Travis’s knowing eyes traveled over the layout of the truck stop. The lights were on in the convenience store attached to the diner; but not a soul lurked; no one was at the register, no one swept the aisles.
The muscles in his gut tightened; these lights also burned with a friendly, beckoning gleam. Easy to imagine a family of four, on their way to visit Aunt Betsy, pulling over for a mighty needed dose of caffeine and because the kids had complained about going to bathroom for the past ten miles, choosing this one instead of driving on by to the next because of something in the lights and the informal, friendly tone of Al’s Eats, enticing them to stop here…
“It’s like the freakin’ sirens in the Odyssey,” he murmured, “unprejudiced waiting for tired, inexperienced, stupid asphalt sailors.”
That was the target – the tired, inexperienced, naïve, dumb folks.Experienced truckers, bikers and road hogs in general would drive right by this pleasant, down-home looking oasis in the night; they knew better, even if only on a subconscious level. Old time sailors were well aware of the old Flying Dutchman and other ghost ship stories, every town in America had a haunted house that folks knew better than to approach at night, and every true road hog knew to beware the empty, vacated yet brightly lit rest discontinuance and diner in the middle of nowhere on an empty, deserted interstate highway.
No, it won’t be the regular road jockeys this Venus fly-trap sucks in, he belief as his eyes traveled across the parking lot, it’ll be….
…crap.
His stomach grew cold as his eyes fell on what he knew he’d been looking for all along but desperately hoped he wouldn’t procure. For the thousandth time since he’d embarked on this dark crusade, he felt the conflict of emotions rise within him; the sharp, hot, blinding fury festering within his guts, bringing his senses to a razor sharp, acute focus, flushing his system with an overwhelming surge of adrenaline and purpose, white-hot hate….
….and a damning sense of weariness and futility. How many emptied truck stops, diners, towns, and villages had he come upon these past years? How worthy blood had he spilt; how many bodies torn asunder at the edge of his blade or ripped to shreds by hails of bullets, how much gore would he bathe in before it was all over?
Perhaps it would have been better if his partner had put a bullet in the middle of his head, sparing him the misery and torture of this wretched game.
He knew what was coming; because it was now the fabric of his life. He was to step into black deadliness, face evil toe to toe; its stinking breath in his face. Maybe he’d survive, and maybe not, but even if he did, it wouldn’t matter, because all he’d wrest from the fates would be another worthless, vague clue, and the hunt would begin all over again.
He frowned, something stopping him. There was something different this time. He didn’t know what, some flicker just beneath his consciousness; a barely used intuition flaring as a scrap of a memory rose through the mists…
…Behold…you will seek me and then find me…when you seek me with all of your heart.
He reached up and grabbed the battered, silver crucifix hanging around his neck, casting a silent, unworded prayer to the heavens and to the God his uninteresting wife had worshiped.
After several seconds, he crossed himself, (he wasn’t Catholic, but what the hell, right? ), hid the necklace beneath his shirt, and turned to commence the truck box. With one last mental shove, he pushed away the sense of weariness, and allowed the heat to rise from the pit of his stomach and fill his soul.
The car parked near the diner was a white Ford Escort. It had seen better days, and was only three steps away from automobile heaven.
More accurately, the car was more a dead off-white tan than white; several years’ accumulation of grime embedded into its surface, which had been hastily painted over, perhaps from a bucket of paint or even a spray can. Leprous rust spots covered the car, and a straightened out coat hanger was jammed and duct-taped in place of a radio antenna.
The windows were all intact, but they too were coated with a thin layer of dirt that never came off, no matter how frequently it was washed. The interior, formerly a light tan, was now eternally dingy, upholstery pock-marked with cigarette burns, stained by spills of coffee, Coke, or Pabst Blue Ribbon. The seats smelled permanently of stale Pall Malls mixed with the metallic, tangy smell of grease and oil, having has made its share of runs to the local dump for spare parts and whatever else could be scrounged.
The final touches, simultaneously droll and sad, were the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror and the brand new – albeit plastic – chrome rims adorning the wheels. Someone had tried, vainly but valiantly, to make the best of what once was a real car. The back seat was littered with children’s toys and books, all of the adolescent range, and despite meager funds, over the years certain things like brakes and brake lines were serviced, in an effort to keep the rolling ratbox slightly trustworthy.
That someone, named improbably Shelly Livingston Longstone, cowered on the still warm asphalt, offering her slim body as a meager defense for her twelve year old son Cody Jr., who lay unconscious on the ground beneath her, light trickles of blood running from his nostrils, rewards for the plucky boy’s futile attempt to defend the only person he’s ever trusted or loved his entire life…mom.
Shelly trembled, her shell-shocked eyes staring in terror at the things circling her, bent low, hands splayed wide, drooling mouths commence, green eyes flashing in the night. The blood run out of her face, shadows of bruises around her eyes shone brightly against her pale skin – the last gifts in a long line of blows from her no-account, good for nothing husband Cody Sr., who shared a name with their son, but nothing more.
Three weeks ago, after receiving her worst beating yet for the irredeemable sin of letting Cody Sr.’s dinner get cold because he came home behind from working at the steel mill, (shacking up with that waitress Candy from the Hooters over in Dillensburg was more like it), she’d decided it was time for her to take Cody Jr. and head for the hills while Daddy “slept off” his dinner before heading out to have a few with the boys.
Of course, his deep slumber on the coach, feet up in the air on a holey, ragged ottoman was assisted by several tablets of leftover Vicodin – from when she’d “fallen down the stairs” and broken her arm last spring – she’d slipped into his dinner glass of Genny Creame Ale.
As soon as he was asleep, she’d rushed around the little, cluttered trailer, packing what she could, taking her money, earned from days of working her fingers to the bone as a waitress in a diner very similar to Al’s Eats, taking his money out of his wallet, as well as the money she’d stashed in the flour jar. Grabbing her son by the hand, they piled all their earthly possessions into the dingy white Escort and drove off, never looking aid once.
She’d spent the last several weeks on the road, trying to sort things out, but she knew eventually she’d have to stop somewhere and make a life for them. Somewhere along the line the police or Family Court would find her, and she’d need to prove she was the better parent for Cody Jr. Summer was ending; he needed to attend school, they needed a home, and she needed a job.
When she saw the “Help Wanted: Experienced Waitress Needed” designate several hundred meters before Al’s Eats, she’d thought it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.
Of course, none of this was on her mind at the moment, because quite frankly, Shelly and her son were going to die.
Her mind wasn’t on the job she so desperately needed or the deadbeat husband she left behind, but on the ring of nightmarish creatures circling her like wolves around carrion, yipping and snarling in low, harsh, inhuman growls.
Her mind wasn’t on how she’d provide for her son, get him into school, but on the rows of snapping, clicking jaws that had no business on a human’s face.
She didn’t think about her dreams of community college and a nursing degree, the horror of the moment precluding any rational view. She merely sat on the ground, huddled over her son, body trembling, her rationality slipping away as these things moved in closer.
A part of her cried out at the galactic, cosmic unfairness of it all that she’d escape one monster only to find herself at the mercy of something far worse. Something demanding that she act, fight to protect her son, but deep down she knew there was nothing she could do, and she shuddered violently in revulsion as one of them, to the far left, a big one dressed in gas attendant overalls, flicked the air with an elongated, serpentine tongue. She teetered on the verge of mind-cracking hysteria; biting down so hard on her tongue she tasted the salty, tanginess of her own blood…
“S’hhcushee mee….canya…notify me where da bathruum iish? “
The things froze at the slurring voice, and faint hope sprang within her. Though the voice sounded confused and drunken, it was human.
In a moment of metamorphic liquidness, the features of the monsters surrounding her – the other two dressed in the garb of diner keepers; one a short order cook, the other a waitress – melted and shifted, forming into normal, utterly unremarkable human faces. She almost cried out at the transformation; not in relief, but in fear that whoever called out wouldn’t see her plight as it truly was, and either leave her to be, or be destroyed himself.
A stab of bitter dismay stabbed her heart as the voice’s owner stumbled around the diner’s corner. A man in his mid thirties, tall, possibly well-built – impossible to advise the way he shambled and drooped, practically tripping over his possess feet as he shuffled around the corner. He was dressed in murky pants, a battered brown leather jacket with something that looked like a thick, black T-shirt underneath.
Her hope died as she assumed with a sinking, damning sense of contempt that he was a drunk looking for a place to “sleep it off”, as Cody Sr. was so fond of saying. She knew the state of mind well; having lived with it for the past twelve years….this man could serve no one.
“Can I help you? ” the gasoline attended asked mildly, stepping forward as if to offer his support to the drunk.
“Well…ya sheee,“ the man, mumbled, an idiot’s grin on his face, “I’s had a little too much ta drink, an’ I doan’ wanna get pulled over by the police or nuthin…already got two DUIs this yar…I’s wonderin’ if I could mebye buy a burger or somethin’ to eat to help me sober uup….”
“Kitchen’s closed,” said the cook, now a titanic, thin man with a severe face, “and we don’t want any drunks about. I think you should just travel along.”
The waitress, now a leggy, buxom blond whose name-tag read, in bitter irony, Candy, sashayed her way towards the man, smiling a low, sensuous smile, twirling one of her curls around her fingers.
She regarded the stranger hungrily, her bright, red lips smiling as she purred, “I dunno, Clarence ….maybe we could put a burger or two on for this fine, strapping young man…” here she pursed her lips and licked them, in a way that made Shelly want to vomit, “he clear looks hungry.”
The man grinned at this and straightened a little. “Wow…that’d shuuure be awshume.” He looked at the curvy waitress lasciviously. “Shounds like a good thought ta me.”
“Buster,” the cook muttered to the big gasoline attendant in a gross, warning tone, “we don’t need this apt now. Besides….” to Shelly’s horrified surprise, the thing actually sniffed the air, his nostrils quivering, “he doesn’t smell just.”
The gas attendant, a big man of six-four, perhaps two-hundred pounds, stepped closer, his face growing dark and dangerous, green eyes bright. He closed the distance between him and the stranger, clapped a beefy hand on the drunk’s shoulder, and sniffed as well. The drunk looked in surprise, as if seeing him for the first time, and slurred happily, “Wassup? “
“Clarence is right, fella…you don’t smell right, not at all.”
The drunk gave him a laughable smile and shrugged. “Itsa Wild Turkey, man…gives me gas everyfreakintime.”
The attendant pulled him forward, grip tightening on his shoulder. He leered, the tips of sharpened incisors peeking below thin, bloodless lips. “Try again,” he muttered gutturally, voice devoid of humanity, the mask slowly slipping away to drawl the true, bestial face underneath.
Somehow, the drunk’s eyes found Shelly’s. Slowly, the idiot’s grin feeble from his face, as well as the mien of a drunken, stumbling fool. The lines on the relaxed, soft face sharpened, and for the first time, she noticed that while the man’s left arm dangled limply to his side, the right hid behind his body.
“Help us,” she whimpered, hoarsely, the last dregs of her strength and soul poured out into one utterance, “please!“
The man who was no longer a drunk did something that shocked her; frightened her as well. He let go of her gaze, giving no sign he’d heard, understood, or even cared, and stared deeply into the eyes of the demon clasping his shoulder. For an eternal heartbeat they locked gazes, and then the man flashed a wide, predator’s smile, flashing white teeth, as he said smoothly and blithely…
“Bite me.“
The gas attendant bared its teeth and roared, lunging forward, but in a blur nearly impossible to follow, the man’s right hand whipped around from his back and the gas attendant-monster staggered back, gouts of blood erupting from its neck, hands vainly trying to staunch the red rivers of blood pouring down his body.
Candy’s face erupted in demonic fury, hissing venomously, her lips splitting into a wide, piranha’s grin as she – it – leapt high into the air, fingers spread like talons ready to rip the man’s throat out when she landed, but the stranger was already on the move; spinning, slashing, something sliver and metallic flashing in his right hand, and he hit the ground on one shoulder, rolling smoothly under the thing’s leap.
She landed but before she could turn he spun into a crouch on one knee, impaling her from the back on a samurai sword.
To Shelly’s horror the Candy-monster whipped and screeched obscenities, but the man calmly reached up with one hand, grasped her chin, and snapped her neck in one smooth motion. The sound was clean, quick, and echoed in the night air.
The Candy-thing finally slumped, and the stranger pulled his sword out, letting the thing crumple to the ground, its gaping afflict steaming. With no hesitation, he advanced on the monster dressed as a cook, face grim, jaw set.
What shocked Shelly the most wasn’t the violence, killing, or blood, but the way the man’s eyes flashed a deep shade of green, just like the monsters’ eyes did…..
He twirled the sword once by the hilt, advancing on the tall vampire purposefully, his stride never breaking. He let the arouse burn all throughout him, felt it fuel him; drive him forward like an engine of vengeance. His pulse pounded, and the psychic throbbing in his head was a constant pressure behind his eyes.
His hand closed tighter around the hilt of the sword and he felt the foreign, inhuman taint flow through his veins. He heard everything around him; felt quicker, faster, and sensed the vampire’s thoughts somewhere beneath his own, humming and buzzing behind that cursed throbbing in his head.
The knowledge that he was something more than human; flowed through him, filling him at once with vicious, mad glee and intense, damning shame.
The big vamp had gone down quicker than he’d expected, the waitress was gutted, now there was only this last one remaining. The vampire said nothing as he approached; no snappy taunts, witty repertoire or clever entendres.
There would only be violence and maiming and then death, either his or its. This was not the movies or a video game. He was striding towards death as it stood there, waiting for him calmly, flexing its hands, teeth bared, green eyes gauging him calculatingly.
The other one may have been the biggest one, but this one was their master.
He twirled the sword once and leapt in, aiming to hold the thing’s head off, but it ducked easily and slipped to the side. His sword whistled as it missed, and he snapped his wrist succor, slashing the sword in a reverse arc, aiming for the torso. The vampire cook darted in end and snatched his wrists tightly, arresting the sword mid-swing. Their eyes locked, and for an instant, only the briefest of moments, a connection was made; a circuit closed.
This was no ordinary vampire. When this one was made, something special had been done; something different had happened.
He broke the vamp’s gaze hastily, dimly aware of a creeping, crawling sensation in his mind, as if long, magnificent phantom fingers probed the soft folds of his brain matter. He snapped a quick kick at the vamp’s knee, but it blocked with one of its own. He used the vampire’s momentary but necessary shift in balance to press in closer, straining his full weight against the deadlock until only bare meters and the sword itself separated them.
The sword moved maybe another hobble, nothing more.
He found himself staring once again into the thing’s eyes; those soft, graceful, gentle eyes that reached inside of him, caressing that hot, burning furnace of rage, coaxing it to cool and die. His hands trembled; the sword wobbled and slipped towards him a notch…
He closed his eyes, breaking the psychic connection, and threw his head forward hard, connecting with the other thing’s face with a sharp crack. He felt a fierce flush of pleasure at the vampire’s howl of pain; he’d crushed its nose, easily.
The vampire’s grip slackened; he pulled the sword free and jammed it home into its breast, eliciting a gurgling screeching as he plunged hot steel through writhing, churning flesh. He lifted his boot and kicked the vampire off his sword and to the ground, where it lay, twitching, fumbling to cover a gaping mortal wound.
He twirled the sword once, stepped in for the finishing blow…
…and swiveled on one foot instead, jamming the sword forward, impaling the gas attendant vampire he thought he’d taken out first. He looked up, fully expecting to see and its death throes…
..and felt a sudden pang of shock to see it smiling at him.
“Aw, crap,” he muttered. The vampire chuckled wetly; its horrible, yawning mouth full of white, snapping and clicking glistening teeth. Before Travis could pull his sword free, it clamped its hand around his and the sword’s hilt, and slowly lifted him off the ground by his sword, peaceful imbedded in the vamp’s abdomen.
With a worthy heave of its whole body, the vamp threw him several feet through the air off his beget sword, like a pea from some kid’s spoon. He slammed off the brick wall of the convenience store and crashed to the hard asphalt onto his shoulder, gravel and road garbage digging into the skin.
Now that was just freakin’ graceful!
He had no time for another thought, because the big vamp was already upon him, swinging at his head with his own sword. He ducked quickly, dropping as he felt the icy swoosh of metal unbiased miss his scalp; felt more than heard the clang of metal against brick, saw the sparks from the corner of his peer, felt the heat.
Before the vamp could reverse the sword’s arc, he lifted his whole body on one hand, kicked both feet into the monster’s midsection, slamming them squarely into the sword wound he’d scored. He was rewarded with an earsplitting howl of harm, and the vampire fell back several steps, but recovered hastily, charging again, swinging the sword at him, screaming in a tongue no man was ever supposed to hear, but the kick had given him the just the room he’d needed to….
….spring to his feet, run to the brick wall and up it for two steps as…
…..the vampire kept coming, and he felt the swoosh of the blade again, the hot breath of the damned on his neck as he…
….pushed off the wall with his feet, flipped upwards and backwards as the sword passed underneath him; the harsh sound of metal on stone filled his ears, he saw sparks, as his hand slipped under his flapping coat, drawing his .9mm Glock as he flew….
The vampire was already in motion, turning, bring its ill-gotten sword in a wide arc, and had it been just a exiguous quicker, the timing just right, Travis would’ve been a headless corpse stumbling around the Maryland Turnpike, and his quest would’ve been over.
Travis’s feet touched ground; his Glock spoke three times.
The big gas attendant vampire lurched as three, bright red blooms opened up on its forehead. It gurgled once, let out a pitiful hissing, mewling sound that faded into a whisper, and collapsed to the ground like a sack of wet meat. Travis’s sword clattered out of its hand to the ground.
He re-holstering the Glock under his jacket as he smoothly strode forward, and without breaking step, toed his sword up into the air as he passed the downed gas attendant vamp, catching it neatly with one hand. He advanced upon the last vampire, which still laid gurgling where it had fallen, blood and gore leaking out of its wound.
He stopped above it, lowering the tip of his sword until it pressed against the vampire’s white, pale neck.
The eyes, mostly green pupils surrounded by gray, misty corneas, looked up at him blurrily, uncomprehendingly, as if it could hardly believe it had been bested by a mere human. It sniffed the air, coughing up blood and saliva, and then sniffed again as it caught Travis’s scent. A look of unbelief passed over its features as it growled liquidly…
“What are you? “
Travis was tired of the question, because he’d already heard it dozens of times before, from humans and vampires alike. “You know who I am,” he said tiredly. “I’m definite your master told you I’d be coming.”
The thing grinned widely and coughed, blood-stained teeth quick-witted in the moonlight. “You misunderstand,” it rasped finally. “We knew someone was coming – we just didn’t know what.” It paused, its hands groping useless at its wound, giving him an appraising look. “You’re not like us…yet you’re not quite human, are you?
How is this? “
Travis shook his head in disgust. “Let’s just say that before your master blew out of New Mexico,” he responded dryly, “he left me with a little parting gift.”
“Ahh, yes,” the vamp leaned aid, sighing exultantly, “I see. You have been truly blessed, then, to have been Touched by the master.”
Okay, that’s it. I’ve officially lost patience with this little blood-sucking crapbag. Travis jabbed the sword point deeper into the vamp’s neck. “Yeah, I’m blessed all right,” he retorted in a curt, dead scream. “Let’s go; cough it up. Where’s he gone this time? I haven’t got all night; I don’t want to waste the rest of it on the standard cryptic answers you guys always give me.”
If possible, the vampire’s grin grew even wider, its green eyes shining in the night. “No crypticism tonight. He’s going help to the beginning …. back to where it all started.”
He squeezed the hilt of the sword tightly, having to fight back the urge to simply behead it right then and there. “No way. He’s not going back to New Mexico; not with all the cops he killed there. Paranormal powers or not, they’d bag inside of a week.”
The thing hacked once, and then tilted its head back and laughed, its whole body shaking with each guffaw. Travis frowned; the sound vexed him on some level he couldn’t identify. Doubt crept into his veins, and for perhaps the first time since his quest had started, he felt off-kilter, out of focus, unsure of himself in the face of such a smug, confident laugh.
“What’s so funny, fang-face? “
The laughing subsided into wet, coughing chuckles. Those damned, green eyes looked at him brightly as it said in a suppose dripping with malice and contempt, “You’re right, the master hasn’t returned to the city of his Becoming; he continues on ahead of you, still one step beyond your advance. He’s going home ….where all of this started in the first place, so many years ago.”
Icy cold fear gripped his heart tightly, squeezing it in a frigid, vice-like grip. His throat tightened and his breath turned ragged, his pounding migraine suddenly tripled in size, throbbing behind his eyes, and he grit his teeth, fighting to keep his expression neutral and betray none of the rising blackness within. “No,” he rasped through clenched teeth, “that’s a lie. That’s not possible!”
Though lying on the ground, eviscerated, the vampire shrugged casually, scraping the asphalt. “Occupy it or not; but deep inside, you know like all the rest you’ve killed before me; I’m connected to him, sharing with him. My thoughts are his, his desires are mine, and we’re one. If you wish to glean him….and I know you do…you’ve no choice but to occupy me.”
Though it was a vain attempt, he fought the urge to give in and surrender his denial. Travis swallowed tightly, his throat raw, and croaked, “Why? Why there…why is he going there? “
The thing smiled again, showing its rows of needle point teeth. “Because….that’s where it all started, for all of you. There, darkness touched you for the first time, and since then it has set the tone for you life, dominating your destiny.”
Travis’s mouth opened and closed slowly, but no sound came out. His palms grew slick with sweat; his grip on his sword wavered. Despite his best efforts, he felt his eyes drawn back to those silky, green orbs, felt the delicate touch of probing fingers in his mind, but he was too off balance, too stunned to fight it.
“Yes….” the vampire fairly purred, warming to its topic even as its blood seeped out onto the blacktop, as its unholy life ebbed from its body, his mind probing into Travis’s mind, “you’ve always known that, haven’t you? Known that no matter what you do in this futile existence you call life, no matter how much evil you vanquished or demons you put away behind bars, now matter what you did you could never change what happened to you back then; could never undo the evil ushered into your life on one, gloomy day.”
“What….what are you talking about? How do you know….? “
Suddenly, like a snake bursting from its coiled rest, the vampire, despite its wound, sat upright, its green eyes fair maliciously, and Travis gasped in shock and pain as the probing tendrils in his mind turned into an iron fist that grabbed him by the brain and shake him.
When the vampire spoke, it did with authority, with purpose, in a voice he’d not heard out loud for a year, a sing that nonetheless haunted him every night in his dreams instead.
“That’s apt, buddy boy! The time for the final reckoning is at hand, and if you consider I’ve put you through the ringer already, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! I’m gonna wear your guts for garters, buddy boy; I’m gonna construct them all PAY…all of your little friends and you, and I’m gone turn this whole THING on its ears!”
Travis stumbled back, one hand clapped to the side of his head as the vampire’s voice thundered in his ears, his head. Primitive, primal emotions; blinding spikes of fear and horror lanced through his soul, and his sword shook, his arm suddenly weary and barely able to hold it aloft. His feet suddenly felt heavy and cumbersome; he stumbled backwards like a child in the face its dreaded bogeyman, which had finally jumped out of the closet and proven its existence at last.
The vampire….which should be dead….dead!….slowly rose to its knees. Even now, as it rose like the immortal undead that haunted everyone’s most childlike fears, its guts spilled out over itself and onto the ground. Asphalt scrapped as it got to its feet; the flesh around the abdomen hurt hanging in ancient, red strips.
Suddenly….he knew.
It was HIM!
The knowledge, the realization that somehow, through the body of this vamp, the one who’d taken everything from him, killed Lilly, was here, right in front of him, filled Travis with white hot rage and terror, all at once. Rage filled him, suffused him, and he snapped the sword back up, but the vampire that should be dead advanced on him still, step by shambling step. “You.” he uttered, his voice dripping with contempt and loathe.
“That’s right, buddy-boy! Still quick on the draw, after all these years!”
“Why? Why are you going there? Why there? “
In a bizarre, freakish pantomime of a dandified gentleman, the gutted vampire strutted forward, hands on hips that it sashayed back and forth. “C’mon buddy-boy, how fun would it be if I told you everything? ” It waved a hand, affecting a gesture of coquettishness, and said primly, “Come on home, why don’t you, buddy boy? We’re all waiting for you here; the whole town, the whole gang.”
A wide, lascivious grin spread across its face, as it drawled, “Lilly is here, too, you know…waiting for you. You let her die, buddy boy, and she’s been waiting for you in hell, waiting…she’s gonna be so happy to you survey when you come home, jubilant enough to EAT you up, I bet….”
At the mention of his dead wife’s name, Travis uttered an anguished howl; one born of all the darkness and bitter hurt living within his outrageous, shadowed heart. His emotional spasms of terror and terror were washed away in a sea of unreasoning hate and the desire to kill and maim; with impunity, without discretion.
He felt his blood rise and grow hot, felt the alien, toxic presence within him spread through every vein; fill every pore. His mind was clouded; the sword an extension of his own arm, a part of his body; there was no thought, no reason; only hunger and an over-powering, all encompassing thirst for this thing’s death.
Before the limping, dying vampire could say another word, Travis swung his sword with all his might, cleaving the vampire’s head from its neck with the ease of chopping a ripe pumpkin from its vine. Blood and dark, black ichor fountained from the thing’s severed neck; its outstretched hands twitched once, twice, and the headless body collapsed to the side, not vanishing into a convenient pile of dust as the Hollywood and TV vampires did, but rather falling into a heap of bones and meat and limp limbs, headless neck still pouring gushing, pumping blood into an ever-widening pool on the black, tar-like asphalt.
The vampire’s head landed with a sickening thud, like a ripe melon, and rolled towards him, coming to rest at his feet; blank, green eyes up, staring at him.
Travis gazed in dull horror at the now powerless eyes, marked the thing’s smile, frozen in the onset of rigor mortis, and realized with a stabbing, biting sense of shame that though the vamp was dead and he was alive…he had lost, for he’d sacrificed himself to the Thirst growing inside of him, even if for only a moment, and in doing so, had chipped away at another part of his soul.
3.
We stood for a little while, watching the fire consume Al’s Eats and the aged gas station next to it, not speaking, mostly because we were both drained and exhausted, covered in blood and grime, but also because, well, hell….there was just not much to say. It’s not everyday you find yourself at the mercy of evil, only to be rescued by someone you weren’t sure was any less evil, all on the tail-end of a dark exodus away from someone who, in his own right, was probably unprejudiced as evil as the vampires that had almost snacked on your tender, smooth neck.
Ms. Longstone was, understandably, not all that chatty as we watched the place burn.
“What were those things? ” she asked quietly, but not timidly. After what she’d just survived, I doubt she’ll ever do anything timidly ever again. “They weren’t human, were they? ” Flat, dead tone of inform – a statement of fact, not a question.
“Scientifically? ” I asked as I lit a cigarette with the same lighter I’d fair burned down the diner with.
“Screw science,” she said with a itsy-bitsy heat, a little anger. “What were they? “
I snapped shut the lighter, put it into my pocket, and took a long drag before I answered, considering carefully what I should say. Finally, I opted for the truth as I best knew it; a simple one that hopefully wouldn’t engender too many questions. “They were infected by something,” I said plainly. “A virus of sorts.”
“A virus? ” The tone was disbelieving; a ‘don’t con’ me voice. “A virus did that to them? What is it, the freakin’ vampire flu? “
I smiled, shaking my head as I took another drag on the cigarette. “No. It was made in a lab, I think.”
“A lab? ” the tone is one of disbelief again, but not disbelief of existence; fair that someone would do such a thing. “Someone made something like this? “
I nodded, replying, “I don’t think it was meant to do that to them. I don’t really know where it came from, but I think it was supposed to make people stronger, faster – my guess for the military or some covert operations group.”
“You mean like Captain America and the Super Soldier serum? “
I smiled and almost chuckled at the reference. “Yeah, sorta. Except someone screwed up, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to, and it got loose…and now we have these things running around all over the set.”
“Is the virus contagious? “
“Only if they bite you and drink; then it gets into your blood stream.”
“Like AIDS or something? “
“Something like that.”
“Does everyone turn into one of those….things? “
“It depends. If they drink too much, don’t leave you enough blood….you just die of blood loss. Some people turn, some people, the virus doesn’t grasp in their systems, and they die of some sort of internal bleeding or honest finish real sick and have a lot of problems. Most turn, though.”
“Does anyone ever recover completely? “
“Maybe. Very few, I think.”
She drew her arms around her tightly, shivering at the enormity of it all. “Doesn’t anybody know about this? Isn’t somebody doing something about it? “
“Oh, I’m distinct somebody is; they just don’t want anyone else gleaming about it is all. When people like these screw up, you rarely hear about it in the eleven o’clock news, unless it’s already over.”
She turned, throwing an appraising, important eye upon me. “And what are you? “
I returned her witness coolly, unflinchingly. “I outmoded to work for the FBI as a Profiler. I hunted serial killers, murders. One serial killer couldn’t be stopped, and he started coming after me, personally, because I was assigned to his case, because I was the best. He….killed my wife, almost killed me….so now I’m chasing him.” I paused, waving my hand at the blazing inferno that musty to be Al’s Eats. “He’s the cause of all this; in outbreak language, he’s patient zero.”
“That doesn’t retort my ask.”
I sighed, and turned relieve to face the fire, saying only, “I know,” and nothing more.
The young lady could sense what I am, easily. Watching me in action, killing those vamps would be a dead giveaway in any case; I don’t exactly move like a human these days, but there was some deeper level to her intuition. She could sense what I am underneath; could sniff it out like a spiritual bloodhound. I’d saved her from an repulsive, gruesome death, or maybe even a fate worse than death; an ugly, gruesome existence, but that doesn’t change what I am; not by a long shot.
Whatever I am, she knew I wasn’t the hero of this tale, somewhere deep inside, on an instinctive level. She didn’t say it in so many words; but it was there in the shifty, nervous way she regarded me when I carried her still unconscious son to her car and checked him over, (he was still out when she left and will have a headache tomorrow, but he appeared to be radiant); it was there in the way she nervously glanced at me every runt or so as we watched the status burn.
She was a practical enough girl, though; when I suggested she clear out the cash register in the store and restaurant and fill her car with all the food and supplies she could before I torched the place, she didn’t balk, not one bit. Whatever she was like before, she’s changed now; there’s a hard, survivalist glint already starting to form in her eyes.
She’ll never be the same, and even though you might think I’m crazy, I believe that’s a good thing. Even though she’s stared evil in the face; an evil that showed her the rules she thought the universe abided by were wrong, she’s survived.
That will become the tenor of her life now; survival, and even though it comes at some cost, (like not being able to sleep a full night without nightmares every now and again), she’ll be better off for it, not like the sedated, pacified, pussy-willows of the world that would nine times out of ten roll on their backs, expose their soft-underbellies to the claws that rip and tear, and play dead as their only defense.
The place had caught fire quickly enough; this sounds crazy, too, but I think it WANTED to be burned, if that makes any sense. Who knows what horrors those walls have seen over the past years; maybe some psychic echo of all those who have died have been crying out for years for someone to torch the place and rejoiced with joy when I flicked open my Bic; maybe it burned quickly because it was old and rotten; who knows?
I didn’t find any bodies around the place, but that doesn’t mean jack; just because I didn’t gain any bodies in my quick sweep, doesn’t mean there hasn’t been countless of other victims suckered in off the highway. As I drive on down this lonely Interstate, I keep getting this mental image of the ravine littered with bones and abandoned tractor trailers behind the vampire-run bar in Quentin Tarrentino’s ‘From Dusk to Dawn’.
No such ravine behind this station, just empty expanses of forests beefy of trees…but who knows what would be found if a thorough search of the surrounding areas was made…
….which will never happen.
I’m speeding down the highway, emotion and thoughts swirling like a dismal sandstorm inside my head; and she’s long gone by now, the girl and her son. I pointed her towards Coverton Flats, a little dust-town back the way I came, where I noticed a ‘Waitress Wanted’ sign at a diner I’d eaten at; a place I was fairly sure was vampire free. Of course, the sad thing is I can’t even be sure of that; it was clean when I left it several days ago, and that’s all I know. I’ll never know what happens to the girl at any rate; just like the many others I’ve saved, she’s ridden off the page of my story, and more than likely, I’ll never see her again.
So what happens to me, now? The path before me has always been hidden, the clearing in the forest always just a ways out of sight around the next bend, but I must admit, I’m more rattled now than I ever have been. The hunts have settled into a predictable little pattern; I net a freakin’ migraine, I find the vamps, hunt them, kill them, and then the last one alive taunts me, points me a little further down the road, always peppered with HIS pet phrase, ‘Buddy Boy’, the one he frail on the phone support in my profiler days.
But what happened tonight…that was freakin’ unreal. He SPOKE through one of those vamps, actually reached accurate through some psychic, mental connection, kept him alive, and jerked him around like a puppet on strings. That, I have never seen before, ever…and I don’t like what it implies. It shakes the foundations of my beliefs, that this is a genetic virus only, and extends much farther into the realm of the supernatural and the spiritual than I’m comfortable with.
I have no groundings when it comes to the spiritual realm. I didn’t believe much in a benevolent, caring God when I was a kid and a pastor’s son was one of my best friends, that didn’t change when I met Lilly, and now that she’s gone, I believe even less.
That doesn’t change the fact that something is going on; something I can’t account for. I SHOULD BE a vampire. Of all the few I’ve encountered who’ve survived this virus, no one has exhibited the traits of strength and speed that I have. It’s there, inside of me, but why haven’t I turned?
This may seem like a horrible contradiction to my claims of half-hearted agnostic atheism, but I’ve visited many religious figures along my travels. None of them have ever had any explanations; in fact, most of them wanted to sit me down with some of their psychology books and counsel me instead, hell crooked on talking about the ‘inner goodness of the human being’. Not many religious leaders believe in actual evil anymore; they believe in social evils; injustice, poverty, racial discrimination.
That stuff doesn’t wash with me. I know evil exists; I’ve seen it face to face, its hot, fetid breath blowing over me.
There were three fellows recently, however, who sensed what I was about the minute I walked through their doors, had a least a glimmering of the unseen war that I wage, day in, day out. Their words vibe very strongly now, thinking of the vamp’s words tonight.
One was a Hopi shaman I encountered on an Indian reservation out in Arizona. I’d hunted down a nest of vampires there, and the resident holy man consented to see me afterwards. It was mostly useless; he did a lot of dancing around and prancing, burning incense, dressed up in a fancy headdress and ancestral robes, but he did say one thing that seemed meaningful at the time: that I was balanced on the Blade of the World; on one side was everlasting darkness, the other, light, and that even though I would be subject to terrible, gloomy passions and it may feel like my lot was ‘predestined by the Great Spirit’, in the end, I would be the one to chose my fate.
Fat lot of help that was; use the dismal side or the light side of the Force; yeah, I get it, Obi-wan.
An evangelical, revivalist preacher in the petite town of Duncan, Oregon had more to say. When I arrived, the folks there thought they had a drug problem amongst their teens; turned out they had a vampire problem. I cleaned house for them, and the next day, the pastor felt the need to take me off to the side and pray for me. I didn’t see the need, but hey…what could it hurt, legal?
When he was done, he told me he sensed I was suffering from an affliction created by man, born of evil, and that the only thing holding the full ravages of the affliction back was the small light of faith I kept hidden under a bushel, deep inside of my distress. He told me the only contrivance to avoid the fate of the monsters I exterminated was to let go of my pain, release my small light of faith and fan its flame.
I told him he was nuts, he agreed with an amused twinkle in his eye, and said, “That’s what they told John the Baptist.” He got serious then, and told me no matter how mighty I hid from God; He would not hide from me, whatever that meant.
The kicker was the Catholic priest I encountered in North Dakota. No vamps there, I just breezed through town and decided, “What the hell, let’s go to confession.” I surprised myself by telling him everything; the quest, the killer, the death of my wife, my recent spiritual musings…everything.
He surprised me by clamoring out of the confessional, throwing open my door, and falling to my feet, praying loudly and saying the rosary over and over again, which was pretty shocking considering this guy was young, six foot two, fit, and looked like he musty to play quarterback for Holy Cross – not the nervous, roly-poly or kindly, easily excitable Catholic-priest types you usually see on TV or in film.
When I finally convinced the guy to get off his knees, he told me he’d seen a vision just the night before about a champion afflicted with darkness who was the only thing standing between the entire world and eternal evil. The best part? He told me he’d been warned about a dark force rising in a dark position, and that the champion must return to the origin of the evil, or all was lost.
That was only a week ago, and I ignored it as crap, even though the part about ‘a dark force rising in a dark place’ held some resonance for me, for some reason. But the vampire… this sounds freakin’ crazy….he told me he was going home, back to where it all started, and this priest and his vision…
No way. No freakin’ way.
And here I am, heading there anyway.
It’ll only be an eight hour or so drive; although I’m sure I’ll urge into some vamps along the way, but I’ll get there, even though I’m smooth not sure if I maintain it.
But like the cook vamp said …what choice do I have?
He said home…I’ve had many homes, but there is really only one place I can call home. Even though I was only there for a few years, it was the only place I ever had any friends; true friends, the kinds folks write books and movies about.
It was a paradoxical place of peace and unrest; completeness and yearning; protection and danger. It was also the only place I ever experienced the spiritual, though I was betrayed by it in the end.
Clifton Heights, New York….tally ho. And may God…if he’s there…have mercy on my soul.
Hmmm…diner coming up ahead. Good time for a snack.
The Republican Presidential Candidates Positions on Gun Control
