Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse (21 page)

He ducked behind a vault, peering around its edge to see what he could see. But then something massive appeared at his side.
 

“Reginald. You okay?”
 

It was Brian Nickerson.
 

“I can’t do anything,” said Reginald, his head swimming. “I’m useless.”
 

Brian was carrying a duffel bag. He slapped something into Reginald’s hand. It was one of the dual-barreled rifles used by the Anti-Vampire Taskforce.
 

“There,” said Brian. “Now you’re useful.”
 

Brian slung out one of the guns for himself. Further down the row of graves, an apocalyptic battle raged. Reginald watched as a tree was sheared and fell, crushing a mausoleum to rubble. Bits of gravestones hailed down on them. Even clumps of sod were flying. Reginald couldn’t see any specifics, but he’d already counted four fiery explosions. At least one of Nikki or Maurice were still alive, and they’d taken out at least three of their opponents.
 

“Maurice can fly?”
 

“The oldest ones can fly in extreme situations,” said Brian. “The vampire agent responds like adrenaline. It’s like when old ladies find the strength to lift cars to save babies. But thank God you got staked. It’s how we found you.”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

Brian ducked around the vault they were hiding behind. Sighting precisely, he fired a burst of shots and one of the V-Crew exploded in fire. Brian had hit him in the back. Shooting a man in the back was very Brian. Brian was helpful when it didn’t put him in danger, such as the time he’d cleared their way out of the American Council building by running for his life, holding another vampire in front of him as a shield.
 

“He’s your maker. He can feel when you’re in mortal danger.”
 

Reginald looked at the melee, thinking of Nikki. He hadn’t felt her peril when he’d first been on trial in front of the vampire council. But of course, she’d never really been in danger. And, come to think of it, she hadn’t been his progeny yet, either.
 

Brian blurred away, leaving Reginald alone. The big man moved like rocket, annihilating graves and vaults in a straight line as he went. One of the V-Crew flew at him, having hidden behind one of the vaults. The vampire struck Brian, but he didn’t remotely impact the huge vampire’s momentum. Brian reached back with his free hand, grabbed the vampire by the ankle, and swung him in an easy circle, slamming his head into the heavy base of a stone obelisk. The vampire’s head exploded on impact like a pumpkin under a sledgehammer, his fancy helmet flying across the yard like shrapnel. His body erupted in fire and Brian, unheeding, ducked behind a square marker that was too small to conceal his bulk. Behind him, the bloody obelisk wobbled slightly.
 

“Brian, get in here!” came a female voice.
 

Reginald ran toward the voice when Brian did.
 

He came to an open area and found Claude hanging from a tree by his neck. He was clawing at the rope holding him, which may have been a repurposed tree root. Maurice was sprinting toward his dangling brother, a sheared off piece of branch in his hands, aiming for the heart. But before he could cross the distance, three V-Crew troops tackled Maurice, pinning him down. The pin lasted a quarter of a second. Maurice exploded upward, sending all three vampires flying like shards from a grenade. Reginald saw Maurice meet his eye, give him a devilish grin that was all Maurice. Then he snapped the branch in half on his knee and ran forward with one makeshift stake in each hand. Soldiers were already coming at him. He speared at both of them; he took one in the chest and the other in the face. The vampire he’d struck in the chest shredded the stake on impact. They wore some sort of armor; Brian had either gotten lucky with his shot or the rounds were armor-piercing. Maurice dropped the stake, grabbed the vampire by the thigh and neck, then ran his hands toward each other to shuck the armor from the soldier like the shell from a crab. He ran forward with his stripped bounty, impaling the soldier on the tree-bound half of the branch he’d broken off earlier. There was a flash of sparks, and the tree began to catch flame. The orange firelight made the radial shadows of a thousand gravestones jump and flicker.

Claude had freed himself from the vine and was on the ground, preparing to lunge. He saw Reginald, then seemed to remember the reason he’d come to the cemetery in the first place. He sprinted forward. Reginald tried to raise his gun but was too slow. But before he reached Reginald, Claude was sideswiped by something smaller than the soldiers and wearing black. Nikki.
 

Claude snarled. He grabbed the sides of Nikki’s head and twisted, hard. But Nikki spun herself with the twist, protecting her neck, and came out of the spin to deliver a fist to the side of Claude’s head hard enough to cause his left eye to explode. His head looked dented like a tin can. His good eye found Nikki but she ran, knowing when to retreat and regroup.
 

Claude’s healing eyes had lost Reginald, who’d ducked below a row of stones. He began to scan for someone to fight, probably Maurice. Reginald felt his throat try to swallow and fail. Claude was as old as Maurice but was much larger. Reginald hoped the spike of vampire adrenaline Maurice had gotten was good for more than flying, because man-to-man on otherwise fair grounds, Claude outmatched his brother easily.
 

Reginald ducked back as Claude sprinted off, caught Nikki’s eye across the opening, and fired his weapon at one of the V-Guards who’d just made an appearance. He didn’t trust himself with the wooden bullets; the second barrel fed by the second trigger seemed to be more forgiving. And it was. When two of the remaining solders (he thought there were six left; there had been some indistinct explosions that even his perfect accounting couldn’t make sense of) paused from their blurred running to approach Brian from behind, Reginald squeezed off a burst of shots. Most missed. At least one hit each soldier. They collapsed to the ground, screaming terrible screams of pain.
 

Brian looked back, saw Reginald, and gave him a nod of thanks. He ducked back and squeezed off some shots of his own in the other direction, still not engaging hand to hand. After a moment, Reginald could see what Brian was firing at. There were four V-Crew soldiers remaining, and they were moving in a group. Brian’s shots went wide; the soldiers ducked behind markers; Brian retreated.
 

Nikki blurred to Reginald’s side. He let out a held breath, relieved that she was still alive. The V-Crew soldiers were faster and stronger than she was, but she was wily and clever — something that wasn’t usually given fair credit in a fight.
 

Across the cemetery, monuments detonated with impact. Reginald couldn’t see the details of the melee — in which Maurice and Brian were battling their five opponents — and watching from a distance was nerve-wracking. He selfishly held Nikki’s wrist, using his strong fingers to grip tight so that she wouldn’t leave him. He told himself that the others would be okay. Brian could best the soldiers if they came at him one by one (or if they stood in front of his gun, if he still had it), and the soldiers were
certainly
no match for Maurice.
 

The thought broke as quickly as Reginald had it, because a second later a mausoleum fifty feet away exploded into stone shards. Then, emerging from the rubble, Claude began proving that he
was
a match for Maurice. The big man in the suit tackled his waifish brother, sending him into the fluted column of a massive crypt, toppling the front edge of its overhang. Rocks fell. The vampires ran, lapping the building, unclear who was chasing who. Maurice directed a punch at Claude and missed. He struck stone, which exploded to dust. The mausoleum reached its failure point; the wall Maurice had struck buckled and collapsed with a sound like thunder. The soldiers circled the others, unsure where and when to engage.
 

Reginald tried to shoot at the V-Crew, but then his gun went empty; apparently Brian had appropriated them half-full. Both chambers clicked dry. One of the soldiers heard the click and looked at him, then began to walk forward. The approaching vampire hadn’t seen Nikki, who’d wrenched free. Nikki circled him, approached from behind, stripped off his armor in one deft motion, and rammed her fist through the back of his ribcage. Ever since their escape from Council, she’d never taken off her carved wooden ring, and now, as it struck the vampire’s heart, he detonated in a ball of flame. Then Nikki ran forward and tackled Reginald, driving him to the dirt, as Maurice and Claude flew above them in a warring ball of fists and fangs.
 

Maurice and Claude struck the ground, separated, circled. On Reginald and Nikki’s other side, Brian reached the bottom of his own gun’s clips. One of the remaining soldiers came at him, claws out, and tried to behead him. Brian feinted back just in time and the attacking vampire missed, opening four deep gashes across his face instead. Brian yelled in pain, dove at his attacker, gripped him at the chest, and pitched him away. The vampire projectile sailed at least fifty yards on Brian’s heave, and Brian healed almost completely during the flight. Then he proved that he’d learned something about the AVT guns that Reginald hadn’t. When the soldier came roaring back, he pressed a button on the stock and a silver bayonet flicked out. Brian didn’t even have to thrust. He only had to line up correctly, and when the soldier leapt at him, the attacker met the bayonet’s tip with enough force to penetrate first his armor, then his heart.
 

The battle moved behind them.
 

Maurice and Claude were in the center of a clearing between graves, standing atop some sort of flat-to-the-ground memorial. They were pacing around each other like characters in a western, apparently having decided that they were too equally matched, that sheer physical force was meaningless. The two remaining V-Crew soldiers were at the periphery, hands and legs in ready stance, seemingly eager to rush to Claude’s aid but unsure where to enter the fray. But the scene didn’t last long enough for them to find out; the brothers had entered the area where Maurice had dropped his two stakes earlier, and Maurice went for one. Claude feinted toward the other. Maurice committed to his grab as the soldiers ran forward.
 

What happened next was so perfectly coordinated as to seem rehearsed. And maybe it had been, during all those long years of Annihilist Faction training camp.
 

Claude lunged in one direction. Maurice went for his weapon, placed his hand atop it. The soldiers both came forward at once. Maurice got the stake in-hand as he was struck by the soldiers, who knocked it from his grip and tried to pin him against the wall of a mausoleum. Maurice was too old and too strong for them to actually do it, but the moment’s distraction allowed Claude to turn from the stake on the ground, which was his decoy, and instead pull a smaller stake from the back of his belt.
 

Reginald saw it happen and began to run. But he was too late — too late by miles. Claude’s fist was a blur, and as Reginald yelled out, the big man struck Maurice in the chest. There was a white-hot explosion of flame and ash as Reginald watched his maker’s face react with unabashed surprise. Then there was the smell of burning and brimstone, and Maurice Toussant — who had been around for Julius Caesar and Jesus — was gone.
 

A bloodcurdling scream rent the night as Maurice’s dying fire made scare shadows dance around the three vampires in the clearing. At first Reginald thought it was his scream, but then Claude looked up, and in a fraction of a second his expression of victory turned to an expression of terror. He dropped behind the two soldiers and began stepping backward. Something came from behind and knocked Reginald down. It was Brian, marching toward the soldiers at human speed. They turned to watch him. Reginald could imagine duty filling their hearts — duty to protect their retreating leader. Claude continued to back away, then turned and ran. The soldiers flashed their claws and came at Brian’s throat, but there was no contest. Brian roared as he caught them both by the backs of the head, and then slammed them together. Their heads exploded like melons between his massive palms. Then there was fire, and dust, and nothing else.
 

When it was over, Brian turned slowly to face Reginald. Reginald didn’t understand any of what had just happened. Why had Claude run? How had it been so simple for Brian to outmatch the two trained soldiers? Was it really over, that fast? Any why, with Reginald’s best friend and maker gone to the breeze, did he not feel sorrow, but felt hollow instead?
 

“Now you need to open it,” said Brian.
 

But it didn’t make sense. Reginald walked forward. Brian knelt, his palm brushing the pile of ash that had so recently been Maurice. His clothes had been mostly incinerated in the flash, but there was something else still there — something Brian was picking up in the way you’d pick up a delicate China plate. It was a long sword, black with soot, its point tipped in wood.
 

“The vault, Reginald,” said Brian. “You need to open the vault.”
 

“Is he really gone?”
 

It was the stupidest question anyone had ever asked. Brian held up the sword. Reginald thought Brian might give it to him in the way marines will give a widow a flag, but instead he reverently slipped it under his own belt, where, on Brian’s massive frame, the thing looked more like a dagger.
 

Brian nodded. “Yes. He’s gone. So you’ve got to open it, Reginald. You’ve got to make this all worthwhile.” He extended a finger, pointing back in the direction where the fighting had begun.
 

They marched back to the utility shed that wasn’t a utility shed, with the strange vampire grave inside. Beside it, the stone angel with fangs stood guard. Looking at the angel gave Reginald a strange sense of unreality. He thought of his maker. Was it possible that good vampires went to Heaven?