The Mammoth Book of Dracula (54 page)

Prince Marshall, leader of the breakaway rebel faction. He wears a necklace of hand grenades. He grins, red tongue lolling in elongated jaws, and beckons Harry forward with a lazy gesture. An undead woman in fatigue trousers, a bristling pelt growing thickly over her bare breasts, mops at his forehead with a handkerchief.

The undead murmur amongst themselves and make way as Harry crosses the room. One, its arms and legs fused into fleshy flippers, scampers towards him and flops down in a parody of obeisance. There is a human amongst them, in a safari jacket with bulging pockets. It is the French journalist, René Sante. His sallow face is strained and pale. He is carrying a video camera the size of a small suitcase on his shoulder, and squints around it at Harry.

“My god, Harry,” he says, “what are you doing here!”

“I see you are working,” Harry says. “How much will you make from this, I wonder?”

“They killed the CBS crew, Harry!” Sante is crying. “They only let me live because they want a record of this.”

“For history,” the undead rebel leader behind the desk says. His voice is rich and deep, and carries through the cackles and mutters of his undead followers. “We show the world what this traitor has done to his country. Keep filming, little Frenchman. I will let you go, I promise, but only if I like your work.”

One of the undead, quills of bloody bone hanging around his face, lifts up the head of the man in the chair. It is President Daniel Weah.

“He tried to make us his zombies,” Prince Marshall says, “but he only made us strong. We acknowledge the strength in your blood, Mr Merrick. You are a great magician, even if you are a white man.”

“It will destroy you,” Harry says.

Prince Marshall smiles wolfishly. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Daniel Weah licks his lips and looks around, blinking in the glare of Sante’s video camera. “Undo the handcuffs,” he complains. “They give me a lot of pain. I can’t think with them on.”

The rebel with the ruff of bone quills smacks Weah around the head, and the other undead crowd forward, chittering amongst themselves.

“He tried to run away,” Prince Marshall explains. There is an uncapped bottle of whisky on the desk and he swigs from it and spits it in a fine spray across the desk into Daniel Weah’s face. “This stuff tastes of piss and petrol,” he says, to no one in particular.

Harry says, “I can explain what has happened to you, but you must let the humans go. This isn’t between them and us. You must understand that they are not our enemies. It is the Count we must fight.”

“We will catch him,” Prince Marshall says. “We will catch him and put him on the stake next to his creature. Then we will drink your blood again, and grow even stronger.”

They do not know what they are, Harry realizes in horror. They were changed too quickly, while they were still vigorous. Usually the change is effected only at the point of death of the victim, after a long dance of seduction, after many little feedings, and with blood fed directly from a vein of the seducer. These creatures were changed by injections of his stolen blood; no wonder they are rotting where they stand.

“Don’t argue with them, Harry,” Sante pleads.

Harry turns on the reporter. “You’re as bad as them, feeding on horror. Put down the camera. Walk away.”

“They’ll kill me!”

The undead laugh and cheer, and Prince Marshall takes out a blue steel automatic and fires it into the ceiling and leans through the cloud of gunsmoke and yells, “I want information! I want to know the truth! You will film the truth for history, Frenchman, then you will go!”

The half-naked woman wipes Prince Marshall’s forehead with her cloth. He is sweating blood.

Daniel Weah’s head has slumped down again. Now he raises it and looks around and says, “I’ll tell you the truth, but you must loosen my arms. They pain me. Prince, Prince, just listen to me. I’ll tell you, but loosen my arms.”

Two undead hoist the President upright in the chair; others crowd around. One, wearing a black cocktail dress ripped at the shoulders and a Hermes scarf in his hair, shows a mouthful of fangs at the camera. They are growing thirsty, Harry realizes, but they don’t know it. The room seems hotter, smaller, full of lurching shadows.

A kind of interrogation gets under way. Sante tries to hold the video steady, although his hands are shaking. At some point he has pissed in his pants; Harry can smell it. He flinches when Harry puts a hand on his shoulder, then whispers from the side of his mouth, “This is the worst place in the world, Harry. We’re both going to die.”

Harry remembers what Lomax told him, and can’t help laughing. “The worst place in the world, my friend? It lives inside us all, human and undead.”

Prince Marshall has become distracted by an argument with one of the undead. He shouts, but Harry can’t hear what he is shouting because the rest of the undead are shouting, too. Suddenly the rebel leader shoots the nearest; the man is knocked back by the impact of the bullet, but he remains standing and begins to laugh wildly, tearing open his khaki blouse to show off his wound.

“You see!” Prince Marshall yells, leaning over the desk and brandishing the pistol in Weah’s face. “We are unkillable!”

One of the undead rips a string of juju fetishes from around Weah’s waist and crunches the knots of feathers and small bones between sharp teeth.

Weah begins to plead. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Please listen to me. We are all one. We are all brothers.”

“That man won’t talk,” Prince Marshall yells. “Bring me his ear.”

One of the undead slices at Weah’s left ear. Weah howls and tries to get loose, but he is held fast. The undead soldier tosses the scrap of gristle to Prince Marshall, who chews it with gusto.

Daniel Weah groans. Blood runs from his mutilated ear, mixing with the sweat on his chest. Harry can smell it. His eyeteeth prick his gums.

“I’ll ask again,” Prince Marshall says. “What did you do with all the money? What did you do with the economy of our beautiful country?”

Weah says, “You know, gentlemen, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Confess to the people,” Prince Marshall says. “Tell them where you keep their money.”

“I was always working in the interest of the people. I keep only one account.”

“The number. What is the number?”

Harry realizes that Prince Marshall wants the access code of Daniel Weah’s Swiss bank account.

“I don’t know.” Daniel Weah lifts his head, squinting in the harsh light of the video camera. “Loosen my arms, please. I can’t tell you while my arms are tied. Please, my ear is cut and my arms pain me.”

This throws the undead, and they begin to argue amongst themselves. Prince Marshall watches, sunk in the black leather chair, sweat and blood mopped from his brow by the woman.

“The Count,” Harry says. “The Count will drain the account if you don’t stop him.” He steps in front of Weah and addresses the throng of undead. “You are all my children. You are all changed by my blood. What you once were is irrelevant. What you wanted when you were human and alive is irrelevant. Listen to me. It’s more important to stop the Count than pursue your revenge.”

Prince Marshall yawns, showing the stout yellow teeth that crowd his elongated jaw, and idly waves his big automatic. “I don’t care about this Count. His creature changed us, but we were stronger than his European science. We escaped, and we are the strongest army in this country.” His followers howl at this. Prince Marshall shouts over their noise, “This man claims he is our father. Let him show it. He’ll change this so-called President, and then maybe we’ll believe him!”

Harry is seized and whirled around. He struggles, but two of the undead hold his arms and another has wrapped an arm around his neck so that he cannot breathe. But breathing is only a habit; Harry doesn’t need it.

His head is forced down, an inch away from Daniel Weah’s neck. The smell and heat of the mart’s blood is dizzying. Harry sees only red, with the light of the video camera blazing behind it. His teeth cut his lips.

Prince Marshall comes around the desk and shouts into Weah’s mutilated ear. “The number! Tell me the number or he bites you and makes you one of us!”

“I don’t know it!”

“It doesn’t work like that!”

“Do it!” Prince Marshall screams. “Do it!”

Harry does it. He tears out Daniel Weah’s throat, spits the lump of flesh into Prince Marshall’s face, and opens his mouth to the rich gush of blood. It runs like electricity through his body. He can feel every cell opening to it. Then he’s thrown aside. Maddened by the smell of blood, most of the undead are trying to get to Weah’s body. Prince Marshall knocks two aside, shoots a third in the head.

The light of the video camera waves across the ceiling; the undead rebel in the wedding dress is attacking Sante. Harry plucks off the rebel, breaks his back, throws him into two more. Someone hacks at Harry’s leg with a machete; he rips it from the rebel’s hands and whirls and takes off Prince Marshall’s head in a clean sweep.

The undead howl. Harry picks up Sante by the collar of his safari jacket with one hand, grabs a discarded AK-47 with another and fires it point blank into the floor-to-ceiling drapes behind the desk. The muzzle-flash sets the heavy material on fire; Harry dashes whisky over the flames and they roar up to the ceiling.

When he turns, the crowd of undead kneels in a ripple of movement that spreads from front to back. Firelight reddens their twisted faces as they stare up at him. Harry plucks the camera from Sante, smashes it, rips out the tape and tosses it into the fire behind him. He walks Sante through the adoring rebels, the wound in his leg ripping wide with each step, and slams and locks the tall doors shut behind him.

Sante is crying. As they pass through the dark staterooms he says in French, “What are you? What are you?”

“I used to think I was a monster,” Harry says. “Now I’m not so sure. What I’ve become sleeps inside you, waiting only for blood to waken it. I’m as human as you, Sante. My thirst made me forget that.”

At the stairs, he pushes Sante forward so that the journalist stumbles down the first few steps. Invigorated by the President’s blood, Harry feels stronger than he ever has. Already the wound in his leg is knitting over; he can feel the muscle fibres swarming together. He tells Sante, “I’d like to say that this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but I have unfinished business. There’s a colonel. Milton Tombe. Find him and tell him to look for the Count. These things won’t live long, but if the Count escapes he will start this again. Run, you fool. Run!”

Sante looks at Harry. He seems to want to say something, but then he thinks better of it and scampers away down the stairs. Harry can hear the undead banging at the locked doors. They’ll break through soon enough, but it doesn’t matter. Without a leader they’ll be easy prey for the army.

Lomax claimed to know where the Count is hiding, and Harry, remembering calm grey-eyed Petru, who could turn himself into a wolf, remembering the claims of the standard text, thinks that the crooked little undead was telling the truth.

Harry runs up the stairs, with smoke from the burning rooms thickening around him. Beyond a plywood door, a service stair leads up to the roof. On one side, the glow of the fire illuminates clustered pinnacles and turrets; at the far edge of the other side a dark shape rises up against the thin grey dawn light. Harry raises the AK-47 and begins to fire as he runs forward, sweeping the muzzle of the weapon back and forth until it jams.

The figure is gone. Harry leans over the parapet but the courtyard below is empty except for the shot-up Mercedes. Perhaps it was never there, he thinks, but a moment later, a dark shape flits across the blood-red disc of the setting moon, heading westward, chasing the night.

Harry turns back to face the east, to wait for the cleansing light of the rising sun.

<>

~ * ~

GUY N. SMITH

Larry’s Guest

GUY N. SMITH was first published at the age of twelve in a local newspaper. Following a career in banking, his first novel,
Werewolf by Moonlight,
was published in 1974. It was followed by two sequels,
Return of the Werewolf and The Son of the Werewolf.

Since then he has published more than 100 books in all genres, although he is still best known for such horror novels as
The Sucking Pit, The Slime Beast, The Ghoul, Bats Out of Hell, Satan’s Snowdrop, Deathbell, Thirst, The Undead, Abomination, Snakes, Cannibals, Alligators, Fiend, The Festering, Mania, Phobia, Carnivore, The Black Fedora, The Knighton Vampires, The Cadaver, Maneater, Nightspawn
and the bestselling “Crabs” series—
Night of the Crabs, Killer Crabs, The Origin of the Crabs, Crabs on a Rampage, Crab’s Moon
and
Crabs: The Human Sacrifice.