Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) (31 page)

Briggs remained skeptical, shaking where he stood, feeling a great need for a long gulp of energy and courage. “I ... I got to get to the bank, get a refill,” he mumbled and groggily started back for the elevator he had placed on hold. When he turned at the door to the elevator, he imparted the news that Stroud had somehow killed two other pires left to guard Magaffey's only a half hour earlier. “That's four, counting your boy, Dolph...”

“Five if you count Ray Carroll,” someone reminded the vampire sheriff.

“Damn it, Briggs, all it takes is one shot from your bloody gun! Why can't you bring this man down?” Banaker wanted to know. All the others stared at Briggs for an answer.

“It's not that simple! Not with this man!”

“He's only human!” shouted Banaker. “Only human. A hundred ways for a human to die.”

“I got to have a drink,” said Briggs.

Some of the others liked this idea. All of them felt stronger, more invincible after a full meal.

“Find Stroud first! Find him and kill him. I don't care how you do it. Pounce on him together, rip him to shreds.”

“He could be anywhere.”

Over the PA came a female voice in distress, “At the morgue. He's been seen at the morgue!”

“Get to the morgue, of course, the morgue. I see it now, hurry! You fools!” Banaker believed Stroud had targeted the morgue to locate more incriminating evidence against them.

Some went with Briggs via the elevator. The others didn't wish to take car number two and so they scurried down the stairwells on either side. Banaker held back, biding his time. He spoke into a walkie-talkie that linked him up with Briggs, saying, “Place your men around the blood bank and the morgue. They're the two areas where he can hurt us the most.”

“Seems he's hurt us pretty good already,” grumbled Briggs just before turning off.

Banaker heaved a sigh. He'd spent hours now going over and over the actions taken against Stroud, the loss of his son, and how high the stakes had become. He'd made mistakes all along the way, sending Pam to do the job he himself might've done; perhaps it would have been wiser to turn Briggs and his police force on Stroud. Perhaps he ought to have listened to Ray Carroll when Carroll proposed that he and his friends be allowed to take Stroud down. So many ifs...

Banaker was feeling weak and defeated and in need of a good drink himself. Feeling sorry for himself, he supposed, feeling beaten and frightened by a bloody human.

The building was suddenly rocked by an explosion in her bowels. Banaker knew it was the morgue, and, god forbid, the blood bank! He raced for the lower portions of the building and he ran through crowds backing away from others who'd been scared by the blast. He shouted for information, shouted for Briggs.

Briggs, his face blackened from the explosion, holding onto another whose clothing was burned off him, shouted in return. “It's the morgue! He's fired the morgue! The auto-alarm's called in the fire trucks!”

“The bank! What about the blood bank?”

“It's safe, or at least it was a moment ago! No damage. Seems he didn't place a large enough charge. Damned fool!”

“Surround the bank! Keep that fiend out of there!”

“It is surrounded, now!”

Suddenly, over the PA system, Stroud's voice came booming along the corridors of Banaker Institute. “This is just a taste, Banaker! Just a taste of what is to come!”

“Bastard! Bastard's still here! Find him!”

Fire trucks were entering the hospital lot, sirens screeching. Banaker raced outside to shout orders and directions when he saw Stroud's helicopter lifting off the roof of the Institute, far overhead.

“There! See! There he is!”

The chopper was off and running, and so, too, were a number of the vampires who disappeared into the night sky in pursuit. Stroud shouted for Lonnie to open the throttle full. He was not certain they could make their next destination before the agile bat creatures. Vampire forms outlined in the sky behind them gave rise to fear and perspiration. “Hurry! Hurry!”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Ashyer from the rear with the still decaying pods, “but what took you so long?”

“A welcoming party at Magaffey's.”

“You are quite untidy, if you don't mind my saying so, sir. But did you accomplish the objective? Sir?”

“Yes, yes I did.”

“Excellent, sir!”

Lonnie added a resounding, “
Yahooooooo!
 Now we'll kick some ass, 
ahhh,
 sir.”

“My sentiments exactly,” replied Stroud, laughing.

Behind them the three monsters in pursuit were closing in. Ashyer rushed to the rear, sticking a head out just as one made a dive at the bay door. Ashyer lifted a large wad of cable and shoved it into the creature's talons and slapped down a high voltage electrical charge rigged years before by his first master, Ananias Stroud. The creature was stunned by the charge and hung on by the cable, the electricity passing through its body again and again in waves as it grew limp and finally fell away. Ashyer rushed back to Stroud and Wilson, saying, “They're on us!”

“How many more?”

“Two, sir!”

Stroud climbed back and with the helicopter shaking him from his footing, he crouched and took aim at the next creature who dared strike at the chopper. This one seemed bent on a hari-kari maneuver to throw itself into the propeller blades to hopefully damage the mechanism, sacrificing itself for Banaker's dream for its race. Stroud aimed the dart gun and fired. The impact slowed the creature and stunned it. In another moment the heart burst inside the chest and the chest ballooned until the thing blew into several pieces, the parts flying in all directions. Some of it hit the interior wall of the cargo bay, a portion of its claw and hairy wing which Stroud would have liked to preserve; but these began to liquify and finally changed to red-hued dust which blew about the cabin and into their eyes.

The third vampire fell back, seeing the awful fate of the ones before it, not understanding how Stroud could have found so powerful a weapon against them. It seemed like magic. As this one fell away, Stroud worried, seeing it turn in midair, going off. He shouted orders to Lonnie to turn and give chase. Lonnie balked.

“Do as I say, damn it! Now!”

“Yes, sir!”

Lonnie wheeled the old chopper around until it groaned with the tight turn, and they gave chase, the vampire spinning away. Stroud knew any moment 
it
 could take on another shape and he'd lose it for good. He took aim. The creature was at some distance. The shot would require all his skill as a marksman and, since it was a dart gun and since they were rocking wildly in an aircraft with debris flying about, the odds were stacked heavily in favor of the vampire.

“Approaching the Institute area, sir!” shouted Ashyer.

Stroud fired, hitting the target. In a matter of seconds, this one exploded in midair. No fire, just a rain of blood and parts.

Lonnie wheeled the machine around once more and tore off for their next destination, Andover Cold Storage. Ashyer said over and over, “Incredible shot, sir, just incredible!”

Stroud hadn't wanted this lone vampire to take the news back to Banaker that they had a secret weapon. So far, so good. The next distribution of the blood paks to Banaker's people would kill them.

In the meantime, Stroud had to get his decaying evidence in storage. And somewhere they must locate more of the S-choline. A pharmacy seemed the logical place.

For now they sped toward Andover Cold Storage through the black sky, a line of light barely visible on the horizon.

-23-

Banaker and the others watched from the top of the Institute as the helicopter wheeled around boldly in midair after destroying first one, and then two, and finally a third vampire. It was evident to all of them now that Abraham Stroud and his companions had found an effective weapon against them, that they could die at Stroud's hand in an instant.

Banaker was shaken in his beliefs. It was as if the natural order of the world had been turned upside down. His face showed his confusion clearly, leading his people to distrust him. All of them were coming unglued. The family was coming asunder. Each was thinking of saving himself.

To this end, the blood bank downstairs was already being overrun by them, each stockpiling a source of the energy-giving food Banaker's Institute provided; each thinking of the long, dry spell ahead when they would make their journeys to somewhere as far from Stroud and Andover as possible. Banaker had to stop the defection. He must act quickly and swiftly. He must regain control of his people, his Institute, his life, his Andover.

He turned to the closest of his people and struck him a powerful blow, sending him to the tarmac. “Get downstairs to Briggs! Tell him I said to alert the Cold Storage group that Stroud is on his way there now! Tell him to hurry! Go!” Banaker then looked at the others standing about the rooftop and he said calmly but firmly, “The rest of you, come with me!”

Banaker tore away his lab coat and clothing, stood on the edge of the building, and changed into the hairy vampire he was. The others followed his example. In moments they all took to the black sky, some thirty in number, vicious birds of prey outlined against the dark clouds.

Chief Briggs downed the first good blood pak he'd had in almost twelve hours. Burping, a little laugh escaped him as he wiped his mouth and rushed out to his car to call ahead to the Cold Storage folk before Stroud should arrive, just as Banaker had asked. Briggs ran amid the firefighters, most of whom were human, going unnoticed in the melee, when suddenly the burp turned into an intolerable heartburn that gripped his heart with unremitting pain. The pain itself seemed like a steel spearpoint that grew larger and larger from deep within his heart until suddenly he felt an instance's relief.

But he also felt the warmth of a liquid splatter on his chest. At first he thought it was a fleshy, bloody piece of one of the pires Stroud had killed in midair, dropping out of the sky onto him like bird shit. Then he realized the flesh of his chest had shredded into jagged edges, his heart was spurting forth blood, and his head was afloat with weakness, dizzying odors, and cold feelings--that he was a dead pire. He desperately tried to deny it with good thoughts, filling his mind with the image of a true Bloody Mary at Jack Tebo's bar where all the pires hung out--cops, paramedics, firemen mostly ... good pires ... just there to hoist a few. Then it hit Briggs. The blood! Stroud had contaminated their blood! His shout came out a pitiful wheeze.

He expired just outside his car, his form turning into a gelatinous puddle before becoming ash and being swept away by the wind.

The other side of the hospital, other pires were carrying out Banaker's order to ship and distribute as much of the blood paks as possible to safe storage locations, such as Andover Cold Storage and the mausoleum. A moving van was being filled with the stuff, but from the back of this van pires were grabbing off what they could, taking what they felt belonged rightfully to them, and what they must have to endure should Banaker fall. Vampires trundled off to Volvos and Jaguars, according to their social and economic means, rushing for their homes to make their families safe, all with boxes and armfuls of the bone marrow elixir.

* * * *

Abraham Stroud was confident that now they might have a fighting chance against the hordes of monsters among them. The contaminated blood source would thin out their numbers considerably, depending upon how long it went undetected. If Banaker so much as got near it with a microscope, he'd shut down all reliance on the food source, and all the vampires would revert to older methods of finding food by feeding on human prey, just as Dolph Banaker did for the sport of it. It was a calculated gamble, and a risky one. It could mean the ruination of the entire human population of Andover if it should backfire. The trick then was to keep Dr. Oliver Banaker so busy, his head spinning, that he would not be looking for the sneak attack of the contaminated blood. Thus far, it seemed to be working.

Andover Cold Storage was their next stop, and once again a diversion had been worked out. There was a pharmacy nearby. They'd break into it and locate more S-choline for the dart gun and hypos to build their arsenal. Once the contaminated blood was discovered, all that stood between them and the vampires was the dart gun and the hypodermic needles.

While Stroud and Lonnie placed the pods in the ice at Andover Cold Storage, Ashyer would break into the pharmacy. Stroud gave him a device for silencing the alarm before breaking the window. As the helicopter touched down in a Little League baseball field beside the cold storage plant and pharmacy, Stroud shouted a good luck to Ashyer who dashed for the pharmacy. Ashyer's black clothes were swallowed up by the dark, and he was gone.

Stroud and Lonnie Wilson began the labor of getting the first pod, the most damaged one with Pamela Carr's remains, to the freezers. But the moment they picked it up, the thing crumbled like ancient cardboard into powder. The powder dusted them, reminding Stroud of a “Devil's Egg” with its millions of spores. “Don't breathe the stuff!” Stroud shouted at Wilson who was coughing amid a cloud of it. “Get out of the bay!”

The two men jumped out, gasping for clean air, the acrid smell of the bursted pod making Stroud ill and Lonnie retch. From where he stood, Stroud watched the smoke inside the cargo bay turn to a brackish, brown cloud before it finally dissipated, allowing them back to gather up Mrs. Bradley's pod. Pam Carr had been one of the vampires and since Dolph Banaker had opened the pod, her remains were unable to withstand the decaying process brought on by the air and all the microbes it carried with it. Mrs. Bradley's remains, on the other hand, were those of a human being to begin with, and despite the fact the pod had been damaged by Dolph, the woman's body remained intact, the pod itself undamaged by the body it housed.

Once more Stroud and Lonnie moved toward the bay door and out onto the playing field. They made for the cold storage plant with their vampire evidence. Somewhere across the street Ashyer was, Stroud hoped, doing much better than they.