The Fly-By-Nights (28 page)

For finally Ned recognized Garth Slattery, while simultaneously he “heard” his enemy’s vengeful message:

Softly softly catchee monkey, Ned!
That bitterly cold voice stabbed like an icy knife at his vampire mind. And again:
Softly softly catchee monkey—you
ugly undead bastard thing…! 

No more than fifteen paces away, around the curve of the mighty tree’s bole, Don Myers took aim with his self-loading rifle and fired at the legs of Big Jon’s attacker where it was side-stepping the leader and putting him off balance. But even as it got within range of its intended victim, so Myers’ shot blew one of its knees apart; and keening, flapping its arms, the thing toppled sideways. Big Jon saw his chance, took one short pace forward and aimed a devastating blow at the vampire’s scrawny neck. Its head came loose, flew free; its body collapsed into itself and crumpled to the spongy ground; it twitched and lay still.

Now Myers turned his weapon on Zach’s attacker—aimed and squeezed the trigger—and cursed as the gun jammed!

Myers looked around for Andrew Fielding, and saw the small, nervous chief tech fumbling with a bulky, ugly-looking machine gun. “It isn’t working!” Fielding cried out shakily. “I thought…thought I’d fixed the damn thing, but it’s still not working! It won’t fire!”

“Try freeing the bloody safety catch!” Myers yelled, scrabbling with desperate fingers where he tried to clear the breach of his own self-loader.

Frustrated by Zach’s jabbing with the splayed muzzle of his weapon, the surviving vampire was reacting to the shot that had killed its companion. As it straightened, turning its head away from Zach to see what was happening, he managed to rise up onto his good knee. And grunting from the great pain of the effort, he struck upwards, ramming his shotgun’s ragged snout deep into the creature’s groin.

Hissing furiously, it tore the weapon from its pulpy flesh, wrenched it from Zach’s hand and hurled it away; and raging, it turned again on its tormentor. This time there would be no holding it, no more problems from this now defenceless cripple!

But Myers had finally succeeded in clearing the inert round from his rifle’s breach; and having primed the self-loader with his very last bullet, he took careful aim and removed the monster’s head…

Then for a single moment there was silence, drifting smoke, and nothing else. But as Big Jon got Zach back up onto his feet a girl’s voice rang out: Layla’s terrified voice from somewhere close at hand, crying: “Garth, be careful!”

“Garth!” Zach cried. “Layla!” And with Big Jon helping him, he went hobbling in the direction of the girl’s voice.

While on the other side of the great tree:

Ned saw the rifle in Garth’s hands, saw its barrel shifting into a threatening horizontal position as his hated enemy began to lean into the weapon, centering its sights on him! He thrust Layla ahead of him between himself and the limping, bruised but determined figure of Garth, and called out:

“One more step, ’prentissss, and she dies here and now. And when your Layla’s dead what then? Will
you
be the one who makes sure she can’t come back? Best let me go, ’prentissss Slattery, and take this bitch with me. That way she gets to live at least a little while longer; that’s unless you’d care to fire a round right through the whore and into me!”

“You’re going no further, Ned,” Garth choked the words out. And hearing the familiar voices of his father and the others as they appeared from behind the huge tree, he continued: “It ends right here.”

Ned saw the advancing men—Zach and Big Jon in front, Don Myers and chief tech Fielding behind—and knew that all of his plans were finally in tatters. There was no way now to make his escape and take Layla with him. Oh, how he had lusted after her warm, live body…but now, that was all she’d ever be when he was done with her: just a body, no longer alive but undead.

Taking her shoulders he turned the girl to face him, and:

One last kissss,
he “spoke” to Garth
. Just enough to put a little of me into her. Not as much as I had planned to put into her—definitely not where I intended to put it—but more than enough to infect her. And then the problem’s all yourssss, ’prentissss. Oh, ha, ha, haaaa!

Ned’s jaws cracked open and a long tongue flickered toward the girl’s mouth. Layla spat hard into his sulphur-yellow eyes, and with every ounce of her remaining strength wrenched herself back and away from him—wrenched so hard that her dress where Ned clutched it was ripped from her shoulders and left dangling from his bony hands.

Off balance as she flew backwards, Layla slammed into Garth dead-weight, knocking him off his feet. The barrel of his rifle was driven inches deep into leaf-mould as he went down with the girl on top of him, and under their combined weight ligaments in his right wrist tore as his hand crashed down in a tangle of roots. With the shock of his injury lancing through him, Garth couldn’t restrain an involuntary, agonized gasp. But worse yet, his weapon had taken the brunt of the fall and had broken apart at the hinged breach!

Ned Singer was torn two ways: he knew that without further ado he could flee into the forest, into the night. But his vampire senses were evaluating the situation. There were six human beings now, crowding that same area under the huge tree; six of them and only one fly-by-night, Ned himself. Yet while the late comers carried weapons—and despite that at almost point-blank range they could scarcely miss—still no one had fired a single round at him! Garth because he hadn’t dared risk it with Layla there, and now because he was down and injured—seriously, Ned hoped—and his rifle out of commission. But as for the others, what of them? They hadn’t fired at him either, possibly because…because they couldn’t? Was that it?

Had the clan finally used up the last of its degraded ammunition? If so, and fully aware of just how low stocks had been, Ned could well understood that. Indeed, and at least where this group was concerned, that had to be the case. It
had
to be, for there was no other way to explain it!

And in his rotten black heart hope flared anew.

The girl might yet be his, and at least one of his enemies—perhaps all of them—dead! For with their useless weapons, how could they possibly defend themselves against the deceptive strength, vampire cunning, and insensate ferocity of a creature such as Ned? In short, and lacking the firepower of deadly weapons, how might they kill what was already dead?

With all of this passing in a matter of seconds through his deteriorating changeling mind, Ned ignored the recent arrivals, drifted forward, and again reached for the terrified girl where for the third time she staggered to her feet. Always uppermost, central in his planning, now for the moment, naked and beautiful, Layla was all he could think of, everything he desired. As for avenging himself on these clan enemies: it must wait until he’d infected the girl and stolen her away. Then on some other night—armed with fresh plans and a swarm of fly-by-night recruits—he would return. Why, Layla might even come back with him!

In his rapidly devolving condition Ned had failed to realize it, but ignoring these men of the clan was his biggest and final mistake.

For as if out of nowhere Big Jon Lamon was suddenly beside him, his lips drawn back in a snarl and his teeth grinding, his face a mask of pure loathing. The leader’s heavy machete glinted dully as it arced overhead, and descended with the weight of a guillotine to hack through both Ned’s wrists where he reached for Layla!

As the creature stood there, wafting dazedly left and right like a drunken thing, and staring disbelievingly at its yellow-pulsing stumps, Garth hauled himself upright, grabbed Layla and stumblingly ushered her from the poisonous danger zone.

Meanwhile Andrew Fielding had come forward; brushing by the others, he was shouting aloud: “Out of my way! I’ve got it! I’m ready!
Give me just one shot at this beast!”

As they cleared a path for him, he aimed or rather pointed the ugly gun he was carrying at Ned Singer, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The nerve-shattering, rapid-fire burst of some two dozen rounds in less than a second drove the small and normally inoffensive chief tech backwards and down on his rump, and filled the air with gunsmoke and acrid cordite stench.

Far more than that, however, the concentrated burst almost tore Ned in half, ripping his pulpy flesh apart from his groin to his exploding skull, and delivering him all unprotesting to that fly-by-night hell which is the final destination for creatures such as him when they suffer the true death…

Then, as the ringing in their ears ceased and their stunned senses recovered—and as the chief tech blurted an inarticulate curse and scrambled away from his hot, smoking machine gun—then to a man, and definitely to a girl, they all of them found it hard to believe that it was over.

As for Layla where Garth comforted her, wrapping her in his jacket and hugging her close: quite beyond words and shuddering top to toe, she could only cling to him and sob her relief into his chest; until at last she was able to inquire, “Garth, is it…is it…?” To which he nodded, and ignoring the pain in his wrist hugged her closer and harder still. For it
was
most certainly over.

Helping Andrew Fielding up onto his feet, Don Myers stared for long moments at the cast-aside, smoking machine gun—then at the chief tech’s unimposing figure—before finally stuttering, “W-what? You, Andrew? B-but…how?”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Fielding panted where he dusted himself down with shaking hands. “Or maybe I should call it poetic justice? That dreadful gun was Singer’s own weapon, upon a time.”

“But
you,
my friend!” Big Jon spoke up from where he stood with Zach’s arm across his shoulder, supporting him. “And that great ugly gun…”

“Arthur Robeson had it,” the chief tech nodded. “I suppose you could say he’d inherited it. He couldn’t get it working and gave it to me to fix. That was earlier this very night while we were getting settled in. Now, I’ve always hated guns, but I had a look at it anyway. The problem was in the feeding mechanism—a broken return spring. I fixed it, removed the breach block so it couldn’t fire, tested it with the half belt of special ammunition that came with it; until without having actually fired a shot from the brutal thing, I believed it would work just fine. So after I’d reassembled it I settled down for the night…” He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before continuing:

“When the first of the gunshots from the perimeter woke me up…well I was tired, it was dark, and things were very confusing. I took the gun with me—don’t ask why, perhaps to give it to someone who was better able to use it?—and came looking for Big Jon. And…well, that’s about it.” He finished with a shrug.

“But you didn’t give it to anyone.” Donald Myers was frowning, shaking his head bewilderedly. “And then left off using it until the very last moment!”

“Yes, I know,” Fielding answered. “But like I said, I don’t like having anything to do with guns; I really don’t understand them, or men like Ned Singer who hold them so very dear. So you see, Donald, it’s just as well you reminded me about the safety catch. I might not have thought of it, mightn’t have
wanted
to think of it…”

“But that’s
you,
Andrew!” Big Jon repeated himself. “That’s just the very essence of
you,
while this…I mean—”

“—I know
exactly
what you mean!” The small man stopped him short. “But you’ll never know how much I hated that man! He was a bully, an ignorant pig, and finally a fly-by-night. I used to avoid him, keep out of his way! He would shove me around—talk to me as if I was dirt—but right now I’ve never felt taller, better or more totally satisfied with myself in my entire life! On the other hand,” he let his narrow shoulders slump a little, “I don’t think I much care for this feeling, not really—feeling like a killer, I mean—and even though that wasn’t a man I killed but a hideous changeling thing, still I hope the feeling soon wears off. As for guns: I’m done with them forever!”

And leaning on Don Myers strong arm, he turned away…

Less than one hour later, in the vicinity of Big Jon’s command vehicle, the leader and a small group of friends and clan elders—including Zack and Garth Slattery—extended their heartfelt welcome, deepest gratitude, and whatever frugal hospitality was available to them to the commander and lieutenants of the kindred expeditionary party which had come to their rescue. And as the bulk of clan personnel, assisted by their new-found allies, went about the awful business of clearing up in and around the camp, where as yet there remained several dead and undead—or now more truly dead—corpses to be dealt with, so Big Jon and three senior officers of the kindred force concluded the formalities of greetings, introductions, vows of friendship and backslapping, and went on to recount in brief their tales of recent trials and tribulations.