Bad Moon Rising (45 page)

(7)

Crow pointed his shotgun directly at Ruger’s grinning face.

“Go ahead, hotshot—splatter me and you splatter junior here.” Ruger gave the kid a fierce shake.

Beside Crow, LaMastra braced himself against the wall and aimed down the stairs at the four vampires who clustered at the lower landing. Five others milled hungrily behind Ruger. The trap was a good one and they had walked right into it.

“Well, well,” murmured Ruger, “this is a hoot. I’m so happy to see you I could shit daffodils.”

The child, a thin boy of about nine, struggled against the white hands that held him, but he might as well have been trying to work loose from iron shackles. The killer kept one arm wrapped around the kid’s body, pinning his arms; with the other hand he traced little lines across the boy’s slender throat. The kid winced and wriggled helplessly.

“Let him go,” Crow said, twitching the barrel of the shotgun.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that.”

“Let him go and then you can have me.”

Ruger shook his head. “I already
have
you, asshole. Both of you. And soon as I’m done kicking your ass I’m going to go upstairs and take that broke-nose bitch of yours. Oh, don’t look surprised. You think I don’t know she’s here? I can smell that piece of farm-girl snatch a mile off.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Crow said softly.

“What…again?” Everyone laughed at that except the living. “Unless you haven’t figured it out by now, dickweed, you
can’t
kill me.”

“Third time’s the charm, Karl. Let the boy go, then you and me can dance a bit.”

“Or,” Ruger said, enjoying this, “we could just tear your arms off and beat you with them. Really, no joke. We’ve already done that tonight. Twice.”

“Three times, boss,” someone said, and they all cracked up again.

“Crow…” LaMastra said under his breath.

“Tell me something, Karl…what’s with all the fireworks and shit. What’s the point? This part of some bullshit evil master plan? You think tearing down a small town like this makes you—what, some kind of vampire king or some shit?”

Ruger pretended to be interested. “Actually we do have a master plan. And, funnily enough, it’s actually pretty darned evil.”

“Oh? Like what? You take over Pine Deep and then you turn it into a vampire tourist trap?”

“No, dumbass, we take over Pine Deep and then we take over the whole shitting world.”

Now it was Crow’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, right. And when the National Guard start dropping napalm on your ass, what then? You going to hide behind a kid then, too, you cowardly piece of shit?”

Ruger’s smile didn’t falter. “Don’t worry, boy, we have plans for that. The Man has plans for everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Put the kid down.”

“Blow me.” Ruger gave the kid’s throat a quick squeeze; the kid winced again, his face screwed up; he bared his teeth as he fought against the killer’s iron grip.

“Crow…” LaMastra said again.

“Don’t be a pussy, Karl. You’re supposed to be the übertough guy…put the kid down.”

“Sorry, can’t do it.”

Ruger pushed the kid forward and took a step down toward Crow. Below, the vampires moved up a couple of steps, smiling at how Ruger was playing this.

LaMastra flinched away from them so that he and Crow were tight back-to-back.

“Rock and a hard place,” mocked the killer. “You can’t kill the kid, and that popgun can’t kill me.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Crow said, putting some edge to his voice.

Ruger’s smile flickered just the faintest bit. “Well, well, you think you have some kind of secret weapon to use against the big bad vampires. Oooo…scary. Look at me ready to piss myself I’m so scared.” He jostled the kid as he took another step. “Let me guess…silver bullets?”

“I’m not that dumb, Karl.”

“You’re not that smart. So…what is it? Holy water? I wash my dick with holy water.”

“Take a sniff, jackass.”

The killer’s smile flickered again, longer this time. The other vampires shifted uncomfortably, and still they all took another step down toward Crow.

“Yeah, well, you still can’t shoot, smartass.” Ruger lifted the kid off the floor to provide maximum coverage.

“Watch me,” Crow said.

And he fired the shotgun.

Ruger was startled, but he was fast. So incredibly fast. He watched Crow’s eyes, saw the tightening of his finger, and then he threw the boy at Crow as he dodged sideways. The blast caught the kid in the chest and flung his small body backward against the other vampires. Ruger ducked back behind one of the others, shoving two of them into the path of Crow’s next shot. Then he was gone up the stairs.

“NO!” screamed LaMastra as he watched the child’s body tumble down the stairs. The vampires stared, as stunned as the detective was, but Crow jacked a round and the sound of it broke the tableau. He fired and the closest vampire was hurled back against the other, his face torn away. Garlic-soaked pellets hit the creatures behind them and they screamed in fear and agony.

Crow spun around and fired past LaMastra down the stairs. “Vince! Snap the hell out of it! Kill the bastards!” He fired again and that broke the detective’s trance. They both opened up as the vampires, caught between Ruger’s orders and the reality that these men had weapons that could kill their kind, hesitated. That was enough for Crow. In the narrow confines of the stairwell the two shotguns cut them to ribbons.

Then it was over except for the echoes of thunder that rolled up and down the concrete tower. Crow sagged back and sat down hard on the blood-slick steps, not caring that he sat between the outstretched legs of a dead monster. LaMastra stood over him, chest heaving as he stared at the carnage. He shifted the shotgun to his left hand, grabbed Crow by the front of the shirt, jerked him to his feet, and slammed him against the wall with such force that Crow felt the world explode in a blinding fireworks display.

“You bastard!”
he screamed. “You sick murderous bastard!” With each word he banged Crow against the blood-splattered wall.

“Vince…!”

“I should have let that son of a bitch kill you!”

“Vince!”

“You shot that kid!”

Crow had just about enough of it. As LaMastra hauled him forward and began to slam him back again, Crow crunched the stock of the shotgun hard against the side of LaMastra’s ribs and at the same time pivoted his whole body sharply around. The speed of the pivot and the force of the blow spun LaMastra into the wall; then it was the sergeant who crashed into the wall, and Crow brought the barrel of his shotgun up under LaMastra’s chin hard enough to lift the detective onto his toes.

“The kid was already dead, you stupid shit!”

LaMastra blinked. “W—what?”

“He was a vampire! He was part of Ruger’s trap. Christ, do you think I’d actually kill a kid, for Christ’s sake?” He stepped back, resisting the urge to butt-stroke LaMastra with the shotgun stock, but he knew that would only be transference for what he was feeling.

“How…how—?”

Crow pointed with the shotgun at the twisted, broken corpse. “Don’t you pay attention? The kid had teeth like a rattlesnake.”

LaMastra turned and looked down. The kid was in a broken sprawl, his mouth open. The fangs hadn’t yet completely retracted into the gums.

“I…didn’t. I was looking down the stairs, man—”

“Save it. We have bigger fish to fry.” Crow said. “Just reload and let’s go find Val.”

(1)

They crept up the outside of the building like roaches, scuttling up along the brickwork in the dark, silent, patient, fired by hunger and purpose. Five of them went up—the lightest of the pack, the ones with the strongest fingernails, the ones who could dig into the cement between the bricks. Four more waited below, smiling up through the firelit darkness.

When the climbers paused at one window, one of the watchers below cupped his hands around his mouth and softly called, “Next one up.”

The five climbers looked up to the big window fifteen feet above them. There was a boom and a flash. A gunshot. Another, and another.

The climbers grinned and as one they reached up for the next brick, and the next.

(2)

LaMastra led the way up the stairs, whipping the shotgun barrel around every corner, whispering “Clear!” at each bend. The tower was littered with debris as if it belonged in a town where there had been strife and warfare for months rather than hours. Torn clothing, nameless junk, broken glass, and blood. In smears and splashes it was everywhere. The copper stink of it was making them sick; the higher they climbed the fresher and stronger the smell.

They were both sweating heavily and breathing like marathon runners. The gunshots still seemed to echo in their eardrums, and their shoulders were swollen and bruised from the recoiling guns, but need and fear and rage kept them going.

The fourth floor door was ajar, blocked from closing by an empty shoe. LaMastra shifted over and crouched, aiming through the opening. He nodded to Crow, who carefully opened the door. They could see the nursing station forty feet down the hall. There were bodies on the floor, but nothing moved in their line of sight. Crow stepped out first with LaMastra covering him, and moved over to the station. A nurse was sprawled on the counter, her throat torn out. Farther back in the large cubicle was a man in surgical scrubs. He had a bullet hole in his forehead.

Crow leaned closer and whispered, “That’s the nurse who helped stitch up Saul, and this guy here’s Gaither Carby. Local farmer. His son Tyler’s a friend of Mike’s.”

“Val?” whispered LaMastra.

“Don’t know.”

There were still sounds around the corner, down near Weinstock’s room. A whimpering cry, a pleading voice, and laughter.

They looked at each other, nodded, and just as they started to make their play a voice bellowed out: “Freeze! Police!”

They spun around and Officer Eddie Oswald, his uniform torn, his limbs streaked with blood, stood wide-legged in the fire tower doorway holding his pistol in a two-hand grip.

(3)

Jim O’Rear rushed into the Scream Queen tent just in time to see Debbie Rochon run by, screaming. When he saw what was chasing her he almost screamed himself.

There were two of them after her, both of them big, both of them with bloody mouths. The inside of the tent was a madhouse. People fought together on the ground, their thrashing legs kicking over the folding chairs. One of Crow’s pals, Dave Kramer, was using an overturned table to block the attackers long enough for some of the patrons to crawl out from under the skirts of the tent. In the middle of all this, some of the tourists stood looking at colors in the air no one else could see; one was sitting cross-legged on the stage pushing candy corn into his drooling mouth as his eyes jumped and rolled; a few had completely freaked out and were yipping like dogs and batting away at invisible attackers. At least a dozen of the customers were slumped in death, their throats torn to red tatters, their eyes seeing nothing at all.

None of it made sense. It was insane.

There was a cop there, but he was not trying to stop the carnage. Instead he was bending Brinke over a table, pushing her chin up to expose the tender flesh of her throat.

“Leave her alone!” O’Rear snatched up a folding chair and crashed it down on Golub’s back. The big cop fell to his knees, releasing the actress, who slid from the table, gasping.

Instantly the cop turned, hissing and showing his teeth to O’Rear.

“Holy shit!” O’Rear staggered back, horror and disbelief twisting his face.

Golub was laughing as he got to his feet. “This is going to be fun—”

O’Rear kicked him in the balls as hard as he could. It dropped Golub, supernatural or not, back down to his knees.

“You bastard!” Brinke snatched her pen off the signing table and rammed the point into Golub’s neck.

The cop howled and swung a heavy backhanded blow at her that sent her flying over the table. O’Rear cursed and kicked Golub in the throat with the heavy toe of his Timberlands. It only slowed Golub for a few seconds, but it was long enough for O’Rear to reach down and grab the cop’s sidearm. He racked the slide and put two in the side of his head.

Golub went down and stayed down.

O’Rear spun around, searching for Debbie. She had a folding chair in her hands and was trying to beat back the football players, but her blows did nothing more than slow them down. O’Rear settled into a shooter’s stance and shot them both in the back. They barely noticed. He raised the pistol, corrected his aim, and put the next four rounds in their heads. They dropped like rocks.

“Headshots,” O’Rear breathed. “Freaking headshots…”

He helped Brinke, who was more scared than hurt, to her feet, and they hurried over to Debbie. There were more of the football players in the tent, and Kramer was throwing chairs at them, hoping for a lucky shot. O’Rear fired as he ran and brought down three more, but it took the rest of the magazine to do it. Kramer grabbed Debbie and pulled her toward O’Rear.

“I’m out!” O’Rear threw the gun in the face of the next closest vampire and the four of them made a dash for the exit. A dozen others followed, but there was nothing more they could do for the people inside except stay alive long enough to get help.

(4)

The Pine Deep library looked like the old church it had once been. Narrow, with arched gables and a tall bell tower, it sat like an echo of the last century, parked between a New Age candle shop and a computer store.

When the killing began there were forty people in the main room, most of them kids who were listening to spooky stories read by local actor Keith Strunk. When the big explosion hit, Strunk was telling them how the clever creature F. F. Manny Thing escaped from a snorgle-beast. Then the lights went out and the windows blew inward.

Strunk did his best to keep the kids from panicking, but everyone was screaming, some in terror, some in pain. Two little girls, Helena and Rebekah, were seated in the corner with a black-and-white dog named Lady. Before anything happened Lady stood up and the hair along her spine rose as stiff and straight as a brush. He looked toward the front door and started growling very quietly. The girls dragged the dog into the corner to try and quiet her, and that saved their lives, because after the windows blew in,
they
came in, hungry and vicious.

The screams became much worse. Worse terror, deeper pain.

“Come on!” Rebekah yelled and grabbed Helena’s hand and they bolted for a door set into the corner near them; Lady backed up with them, barking at the snarling things that moved through the room.

Helena pulled the door open and they ducked inside, pulling Lady with them. Rebekah slammed the door and shot the bolt and for a terrifying minute they stood there at the top of the cellar stairs, listening to sounds. Dreadful sounds. Wet and awful.

When they heard something bump against the door, something that sounded like an elbow or a knee but with a limp, sliding quality, they ran down into the darkness of the basement, trying not to scream, trying not to cry.

When the library had bought the old church property most of the inside of the building had been renovated, but not the basement. Used for storing books and old furniture, it was a warren of stacks of boxes and bags, but even in the dark the girls knew every inch of it. They’d played hide-and-seek here, had invented games of being archaeologists in ancient tombs—and in this they weren’t far off the mark. Beneath the floor of the backmost closet, under a layer of concrete poured by accident during an earlier renovation when the church passed from Baptist to Methodist hands in the 1970s, the centuries-old crypts had been inadvertently hidden. Now that room contained disused file cabinets filled with paperwork no one could even identify. That’s where the little girls went with their dog. They ran in there, stifling their sobs, trying not to think about what was happening upstairs to their friends.

Helena, the taller and stronger of the two, slammed the door and began pushing at the filing cabinets. She was seven and a half and her little body was tough, but not tough enough—not until Rebekah realized what she was doing and threw her weight into it. Between them it was just enough, and the first cabinet slid twenty inches and thudded against the door. They found another and pushed that, and another. It took them fifteen minutes, and all the time the sounds of mayhem continued from above, and Lady kept growling.

When there was nothing else they could push in front of the door, the two girls sank down with their backs to one cabinet, holding each other, and they both broke down into helpless, hopeless sobs.

Much later, when the newspapers were telling the story of what happened in Pine Deep on the night that became known worldwide as “Hellnight,” there would be a number of articles written about two little girls and their dog who hid among the dead and as a result got to live.

(5)

“Val! I heard shots,” Mike said. “Listen.”

“Crow!”

They crowded as close to the door as the barricade would allow, Mike and Val pressing against Jonatha and Newton, with Weinstock behind them. Huddled together they could each feel the trembles rippling through each other.

“I think I heard two guns at the same time,” Val said.

Mike closed his eyes, trying to focus on his hearing even though his ears rang from the shots Val had fired through the door. The crawly sensation was constant now and he knew that there were many of them out there. Then the sensation spiked up like someone jabbed a hot electric wire in the back of his neck; he stiffened.

“Mike,” Weinstock said behind him, “what is it?”

“I feel—”

His eyes flew wide and he tried to spin around, but Weinstock was pressing forward too hard. A warning was rising to Mike’s lips and then suddenly Weinstock was whipped backward away from him. White hands seemed to appear out of nowhere and they snatched Weinstock, tearing at his skin.

“NO!” Mike screamed, bringing up his shotgun, but there was no clear shot; Jonatha and Newton seemed to turn in slow motion, but Val lunged forward, grabbing Weinstock’s hand as he fought against the four vampires that had him. A fifth was climbing through the empty window frame—a boy the same age and size as Mike—his friend Brandon.

Val fired two shots and one of the vampires went down, but the others were moving backward so fast and Weinstock was flailing too much. Mike leapt forward and grabbed the doctor by the hand.

“Help me!” Weinstock and Mike screamed it at the same moment. A vampire clamped his hands around Weinstock’s throat and Val fired again; the round clipped Weinstock’s shoulder, but it also caught the vampire in the throat. Weinstock shrieked in pain and suddenly there was blood on his throat and chest.

They were at the window now. Jonatha and Newton beat at them with their fists, Val hammered with the butt of her pistol. She leaned over Weinstock as the whole crowd of them, human and inhuman, hung teetering on the windowsill. She jammed her pistol into a white face and fired, jammed it into a belly and fired. Mike dropped his gun in order to use both hands. Weinstock kept screaming and screaming.

Val shot at Brandon and he fell backward, either hit or falling from loss of balance. He plunged into the darkness.

And then it was over. Two vampires lay dead on the floor. Two others, dead for sure, had been blasted out the window. Mike held Weinstock’s hand, and Jonatha and Newton had handfuls of the doctor’s pajamas. They clung to him, pulling him back from the abyss.

“Saul!” Val said, casting around for something to use as a bandage for his bleeding throat. “He’s hurt—Newt, Jonatha, help me get him to the bed. Mike, watch the window.”

Mike snatched up his weapon and went back to the window, but the assault was over. Two bodies lay on the ground four stories below, but there was no sign of anyone else. He looked up and sideways, just to be sure, but nothing. His friend Brandon’s body was not among the dead and Mike thought he could hear Brandon’s laughter on the wind.

“Christ, he’s bleeding bad,” Newton said. Jonatha started tearing off pieces of sheet for Val, but as soon as she pressed them against Weinstock’s throat they became soaked with blood.

“I think they got the artery,” Val said. Her face was spattered with blood. “How do I stop it? Saul! How do I stop it?”

Panic was in Weinstock’s eyes and he kept trying to speak, but every time he opened his mouth all that came out was blood.

“Saul…what do I do?” she begged. The wad of torn sheeting was soaked; blood ran down her wrist. “Oh, God, Saul…please…
help me,
please!”

The panic in his eyes was fading now, flowing out of him as the blood flowed. He tried to speak, tried to say something, and Val bent close, listening with all her strength for some clue, some magic trick of medicine that he could give her.

All he said was, “Rachel.”

His eyes stared at Val and maybe in that last moment he was seeing the face of his wife, and maybe the faces of his children; he did not see Val’s face, or the faces of the others who clustered around him, each face shocked as white as the faces of the monsters who had done this. Saul Weinstock stared through them and through the walls and through the night with a fixity of vision so intense and so pure that he might have looked on the face of God.