Vampires (14 page)

And there were some other examples and Felix...

Felix said not a word the entire time. He simply sat there staring at Crow, not even smoking, until Jack wound down.

“... just the Style, Felix. Nothing else. So they're gonna get us. So what? It's the Style that matters. Follow me?”

And when Felix spoke his voice was a harsh rasping crackle: “Crow, don't you ever spout that kind of crap at me again! Not ever. Do you hear me?”

And Jack thought, My God, I think the sonuvabitch is gonna shoot me if I don't agree!

And he said, “Okay, Felix.”

Felix turned away and stared unseeing at the huge black locomotive.

“Now can we go back?”

Jack nodded, started the car, and drove away.

Thinking: Sheeeyit! What did I turn over here?

And then thinking: God, I blew that one. He wasn't anywhere near ready for that.

A few seconds later Jack sneaked a quick glance to his right. Felix still stared stone.

God! I hope I haven't frozen up my damned gunman again. We've got to have him on this one. We go in there and they come busting up and he doesn't shoot...?

And then he thought: Fuck it! Nothing I can do about it now. If I blew it, I blew it. Forget it. Shouldn't have brought him along. Shoulda come out here alone like I always do, so, Okay, forget he's here, Jack, oh Great Stupid Leader. Forget it. Do your bit. Deep breaths. Deep breaths and forget Felix and go through those pictures, do 'em now, paint those pictures, because if you can't see it now, if you can't visualize success now, then you sure as shit won't know what to do at the split second...

And he began to do it. He steered the car with automatic pilot, seeing not the streets of Cleburne, Texas, through the windshield, but victory.

He set the aquarium filled with pig's blood in the elevator. Laced with speed and coke and rat poison and all the rest of it. Wouldn't kill 'em but, like the flare on that goon, it just had to be a little distracting to suddenly come on to' twenty or so LSD trips at once. Sure, it would smell funny. The fiends would know there was something wrong with it but they could see it! That's why he'd had Cat get an aquarium, so they could not only smell the blood, they could see it through the glass. Just too damn tempting to resist. Plunging their rotten fangs into it like bobbing for apples and then all that poison and dope starts hitting 'em and then the elevator takes them up and by the time the doors open they're gonna be so stoned and sore and weirded out...

The crossbow cable pulls 'em out too fast for 'em to stop it, stoned as they are. The cable is attached to the Blazer because the winch is too slow to take a chance and I'll just whistle to Carl on the radio and he'll hit the gas and that fiend will be out of that elevator and through the doors and burning before it knows what hit it.

Sure as hell!

Shit! We might not even need a gunman!

But they did. And right then they didn't really have one.

Felix, sitting beside the oblivious Jack Crow, had begun to rock and tremble like a molten volcano.

He sat there on the tailgate of the Blazer and watched them take care of last minute details and he hated everything he saw.

But he did not speak.

He hated the job, of course, and he hated the place and he hated the Plan and he hated the sight of his pair of Brownings lying there beside him waiting to be strapped on and he hated the. . . earnestness. . . with which the rest of the Team went about it all.

But mostly he hated the sight of Jack Crow stalking about giving orders and inspiration and knowing this guy in charge was clogged tight with that suicidal half-wit philosophy about... about what? “Everybody's-got-to-go-sometime-so-how's-about-right-now?” or some such obscenity.

But he did not speak.

He just hated and smoked and boiled.

He also feared, but he was too angry at Crow to realize that, too furious and disgusted with that crap Crow had spouted at him by the locomotive. Bad enough having to do this shit and probably die doing it, but to have the goddamn boss start jamming this juvenile Code of Half-Ass Karma at him...

As far as Felix could tell, Crow's philosophical foundations consisted of: “Oh, well, what the Hell!”

But still, the gunman did not speak.

What was the point... The job was on. The war was moments away and they were all going to fight in it, himself included, and nothing Felix could say now was going to stop it or save a fucking soul.

And then he heard it: “Rock and roll!”

And they were going inside.

Past the great glass double doors taped black against the sunlight with even that tiny notch they'd cut for the cable covered with black cardboard flaps and the rest of the inside also dark and cool and dry from the air conditioning-he hadn't realized how hot it had been outside-but in here it was like a soft, dark tomb with every window taped up to be sure they came out of the elevator and Felix understood why Jack had decided to forget those damn gas masks and that gas because it was already tough enough to see in here even with the spotlights set up at every angle they could think of and all of them, Jack and Cat and Father Adam and Deputy Thompson and even Carl Joplin, gathered in front of the surveillance monitors Carl had set up at a little coffee table in the lobby so that Jack could see them while he worked the elevator and.

And it got very quiet and still with them just standing there for an instant, breathing in that air-conditioned air and watching those dark monitors.

“Hit the lights,” said Jack calmly, “and let's see what we can see.”

And the lights downstairs in the cells came on-Felix had no idea who flipped the switch, had no idea of the source of any other movements but his own and Jack's and whoever was standing dead inside of that tiny tunnel which had become his vision-and the cameras swept slowly back and forth showing the rows of bunked cells.

And no one was in them. They were empty.

For just an instant, Felix felt an exquisite thrill of relief until Carl Joplin lifted a chubby finger to one of the screens and pointed to an unmade bunk in the corner.

“There, I think,” he whispered. He moved his finger to another bed beside it, also unmade. “And there.”

Felix stared at the screens, unbelieving, and then back at the others' faces, glowing in the lights from the screens, and then be looked back at the screens themselves, back at the two unmade bunks, and then he saw those outlines in the mattresses and knew the beds were unmade because someone-or something, goddammit-was still lying in them.

And his fear rose and swirled up his spine.

“I don't get it,” whispered Kirk. "I mean, I understand it's vampires and all that. Can't see ~em in mirrors and stuff. But what about their clothes? We oughta be able to see their clothes! I mean, it's a scientific fact that . .

“Deputy,” said Father Adam, from just off his right shoulder, and Kirk turned around and looked at the priest.

“Deputy,” Adam repeated softly. “'science' can be helpful.” He gestured to the screens. “And we use it all that we can. But,” he whispered firmly, looking into the other man's face, “this isn't really about 'science.'”

And the deputy eyed him a beat or two before nodding and looking back to the screens and Felix felt another chill rise and twist within his guts because he hated, absolutely goddamn hated when the priest sounded so sure because he was always, always, right and about then Jack leaned over and around the screens for one last look, at the aquarium, sitting blood-filled and ready inside the elevator.

Then he flipped a switch and the elevator doors closed and they all heard the groaning clunking as the elevator started down. It seemed so loud! It seemed loud enough to wake the- “There!” cried Carl Joplin, and his stubby finger

thumped the screen again and moved away and Felix saw. Streaks, outlines, ephemeral. . . drifting. . but with a

purpose, with a pattern and direction and Felix could see them sometimes, really see them when they would move and then pause and for just a brief half second he could see them, see their outlines, see their expressions!

And they were smiling.

“I guess,” offered Cat with a very dry throat, "they smell the blood.'

And just then all turned to the last monitor, the one that showed the inside of the elevator cage, empty save for the bright-red aquarium and just then the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened and the streaks-there were three of them, clearly three, one man and two women-moved down the row of bunks toward the elevator and...

There! In the elevator screen they saw one of them appear and they could all tell, somehow-out of the corners of their eyes, sort of-that it was one of the women.

“Carl!” whispered Jack Crow harshly. “Get outside and get ready.”

“Right,” Carl whispered hard in return and he was gone.

Jack looked at the others.

“Get in position.”

And they all moved back from the screens to somewhere-Felix was too numb to really tell or remember where-the others were somewhere over there to the right of the elevator door somewhere and he and Jack were supposed to stay here on the left.

He thought. He wasn't sure. He couldn't remember. He couldn't...

“How many do you want, bwana?” Cat asked.

Crow looked up at him and his face was hard. “Get to your spot, Cherry.”

Cat hesitated, looked at the screens, looked back at Crow. “It's just that.., you think we can handle more than one?”

Jack eyed him a moment. “Whoever comes up with it. Get moving.”

Cat hesitated again, then nodded and left, the glare of the spotlights glinting brightly off the polished shaft of his pike.

And then, from a desk on the other side of the booking counter, just visible through the huge black grille that rose from the top of the counter to the ceiling, a phone began to ring.

At first they just jumped. Then they turned and looked at it. Then they realized just which phone it was and then. .

One of the downstairs screens, the one showing the guard's station just beyond the wide-open barred gate leading to the elevator, showed a wall phone. The receiver was off the hook and banging in the air and sometimes Felix could see the outlines and sometimes he could not but he knew who it was, knew it was the man.

The vampire was calling them.

“Suspicious sonuvabitch,” muttered Crow but Felix didn't really hear him. Felix was staring at the other screen, the one showing the open elevator and the aquarium full of blood that appeared to be all but boiling.

“God!” he whispered almost silently.

But Crow heard it and looked and the two of them sat there in silence as the outline-image of her came and went, came and went, as she threw her open mouth at the blood, sloshing it against the glass, and even as a ghost they could see her frenzy, her hunger, her thirst.

Twice, Felix felt sure he could see the fangs.

Jack Crow leaned forward abruptly and closed the elevator door and started it up and growled, “Here we go, troops! Rock and roll.”

But everyone knew, everyone heard the elevator. Everyone knew what was coming up to see them.

And the phone stopped ringing and the screens showed empty quiet cells and within seconds the shrieks of pain and anger began to echo from inside the elevator cage. The poison, the drugs, were getting to her.

“Enjoy, bitch,” muttered Crow and he stood up away from the screens carrying his crossbow.

And that was it, then. That got Felix going at last, that sight of Jack Crow's muscled hand gripping that crossbow and moving into position and then Felix was moving also, alongside Crow's left flank and as he did so he noticed Cat up there, climbing atop the elevator cage holding his sack of gasoline-filled balloons and Felix remembered standing there earlier amidst the acetylene sparks when Carl had cut that hole in the top of the elevator car itself so that Cat could. . . could what?

And Felix's mind swirled with the remembered thought that Cat was supposed to throw his little water-gas balloons down into that bloody elevator along with a flare! to drive the vampires out into their killing area and that was insane, that was madness and Felix's thoughts screamed, I've got to get away from these people!

But all he did then was draw one of the Brownings and that's when they began to hear the reverberations from the elevator shaft, the din of pounding and screeching and banging and Felix thought, My God! She's going to tear that elevator apart!

Then suddenly, quiet. No banging. No horrible echoing screams, just the rumble of the car as it rose the last few feet and stopped.

The elevator door did not open.

And it still didn't open.

And then it tried, old circuits buzzing audibly and the metal groaning and it wouldn't open..

And Felix and Jack found themselves over in front of the screens without thinking but there was nothing on them except shattered glass and blood everywhere, on the floors and the walls and they barely glanced at each other before moving back into position, weapons held high, and Crow called out, “Careful, people. Looks like she jammed it shut!”

And then he reached down for his little remote device Joplin had fashioned for him-it was on the floor about fifteen feet from the elevator-and that's where they were. Felix and Crow standing together, when the elevators doors just blew off their moorings and crashed into them.

The door got Crow first, hitting him flat and flush on his right side and then spinning over his head like a flipping card and smacking Felix a glancing blow on the side of his head and as he went down he saw her streaking out of the elevator through the darkness and the room suddenly filled with dust and then he was flat on his back staring blankly at the glare of an overturned spotlight on the ceiling tiles past the edge of the crumpled elevator doors on top of him.

Then movement in the lights and sounds of shuffling feet and someone called out something to someone else and he lifted himself up, shoving the door off to one side with his gun hand and-

-and she was looking at him.

She was there, standing just in front of the elevator heaving for breath and glaring at him, and he saw her eyes arc and her lips spread back and he heard the hiss and the fangs came out and he knew he was dead, knew it, knew it, but it was so distant, somehow, like happening on a movie screen to someone else.

Should shoot her. . . Knew be should shoot her and he had the gun in his hand still but he couldn't remember how to shoot but he raised the pistol anyway and she saw it and came at him, at him, at him.

And Father Adam's crossbow went off and the huge bolt crunched through her back from just under her left shoulder and punched out through her right breast and she shrieked and leapt high into the air, spinning and shrieking... shrieking...

And then she was gone.

Where? Somewhere. Somewhere to the left maybe? She had moved so fast.

And he felt himself being jerked to his feet and he almost screamed thinking it was her but it was only Jack, standing there with blood on his cheek and looking at him.

“Are you all tight?” he asked.

And Felix nodded and looked past him to Father Adam, who stood frozen and pale beside the deputy, holding an empty crossbow and staring at the vampire as she thumped toward him-My God! she could hardly move, she was skewered by that thing and it flopped as she tripped toward him and that clear, thick bile was pumping out around the shaft and the deputy lifted the sharp pike he carried but that wasn't going to be enough and Felix shouldered Jack to the side and fired, a wild, frightened shot and hit her in the foot of all places, right in the instep of her left foot and she howled and leapt and turned back toward him and he fired again and the bullet seemed to take a chunk off the top of her left shoulder and more of that stuff bubbled out through the fabric of her...

Of her blouse? Of her Mexican peasant blouse, white with beautiful embroidery, and he looked at her at last, saw her as she really was with her deep rich eyes and plaintive whisper of pain...

Don't you want me? Don't you desire me and love me and want to take care of me?

And he did! He felt the molten pumping lust and wanted her alive and healthy and soft and tender in his arms...

And he dropped the gun to his side as she came toward him again and he was holding his arms out to receive her when the crossbow bolt jammed through her ribcage caught and she winced and he saw the fangs appear suddenly and he shot her three times through the chest.

And she howled and spat as the silver slugs slammed through her and she went straight down on her back, writhing and howling and spitting as the crossbow bolt twisted and torqued under her weight but then she was up immediately, up and moving, streaking, blurring white as she passed across in front of the elevator and the booking counter was in her way and she had to collide with it and when she did a chunk of formica topping the size of a chessboard all but exploded off of it but didn't slow her down at all. She bounced off and disappeared down the hallway into the back of the jail by the offices and they heard the slamming and wailing and crashing as she searched for a way out and then there came a tremendous thundering concussion and the lights began to flicker.