Vampires (9 page)

Cat was having a very weird day.

He sat there in the bishop's office between Father Adam and Jack and decided their new client, who was a Mrs. Tammy Hughes and who was also the mayor of Cleburne, Texas, was just a little too cheerful for this tale she had to tell.

And that was pretty weird.

Then there was the tale itself, all about half-formed goons (they couldn't be full vampires yet from her peeling-cheek description) stomping around the downtown Cleburne square chewing on people. The local police had tried to help, emptying magnum after magnum into those decomposing husks, and the goons had noticed it-roaring and spinning in pain-but had not stopped feeding. The only injuries were to the victims, who were dragged brutally away into an abandoned department store warehouse across from the county courthouse. The cops had cordoned the area off.

And that was pretty weird, too. Cat had never heard of 'em being that obvious before. And besides, where was the master vampire during all of this? It was almost as if they were trying to advertise.

Naw. That was too weird.

And then of course there was Jack, who looked like hell and acted worse. Cat thought he hadn't slept the night before, and knew damn well something was bothering him, but when he tried to get to it, Jack told him to leave him alone.

And that was weirdest of all.

Cat glanced casually to his side and eyed Jack once more. He really looks awful sitting there with his neck crammed down in his shoulders and his throat pulsing hard. He looks like.. . I dunno. Like he's...

Scared.

Holy shit! What's going down here?

All Adam felt was admiration at Jack's full and complete concentration. He didn't read Jack's fear, couldn't have through the haze of his own.

Here I go at last, he thought.

Jack listened to the rest and then got them out of there and back to the suite at the Adolphus. He didn't speak during the drive and didn't answer questions. He glanced occasionally at the rest of the team while Cat relayed what had happened in the bishop's office but he looked away when they looked back.

It was a trap. And he didn't know how to tell them. He didn't know what to do. He didn't...

He didn't know.

He excused himself about the time they got down to making plans for the job in Cleburne the next morning. He couldn't think, couldn't focus, couldn't face them. He went to the bathroom and closed the door and lit a cigarette and just sat there and feared.

Three years at this. Three years and eighteen straight pits wiped clean. All of it dangerous. All of it bloody. All of it awful. And certain death hanging around all along.

But now it's not a matter of blowing up buildings in broad daylight. Now it's a matter of staying alive through the next night anywhere in the world.

Because if they know me, they can find me.

Shit.

And if they know me and find me they can set me up tn Cleburne, Texas, and that's exactly what they've done and there's not one thing in the world I can do about it.

Because we still have to go. It's what we do. It's where the vampires are.

I wonder if-

There was a tap-tap-tap on the bathroom door and be heard Cat's voice saying it was the mayor on the phone and did Jack want to take the call? Jack frowned. Hell, he didn't even know the mayor. What was his name? Goldblatt, or something? And then he realized the mayor Cat meant. Her, that Cleburne mayor. Calling him. Knowing where to call.

He got up and dropped his cigarette in the bowl and flushed it because he didn't want the rest of them to know he was only in there to be a chickenshit and then he strolled into the main living room of the suite with all eyes on him and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Crow?” asked that same too-country voice.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Crow, I hate to disturb you at home. Or at your hotel, I mean. Or do you live there?”

So. You wanna know where I live do you?

“I live here.”

“Oh. Well, I should think you'd want to live with the rest of your employees. Your team, is it?”

“We all live here.”

“I see.”

“Miz Hughes, did you call for a reason?”

"Oh, yes. It's about your check for $50,000..

“What about it? I told you we don't work without half up front.”

“Oh, I know, I know. I understand. I wasn't complaining. You'll get your check tonight as we agreed.”

“Then what's the point?”

“Well, I just thought that I could bring it over instead of using a messenger.”

“Okay. Come on over.”

“Oh. Well, I couldn't do it right now. I've got some.. . well, some shopping to do in town first. I so rarely get to come to Dallas. But being a man I don't think you'd understand. Anyway, I just wondered if you were going to be there when I finished so I could give you the check personally.”

“When would that be?”

“Oh, I don't know. About nine o'clock?”

“Would that be all right?”

What Jack wanted to say was:

Let's get this straight, bitch. First you wanna know where we're gonna be after sundown because, while there are ghouls slaughtering your citizens in your courthouse square every night, you're gonna take the time to pick up some pantyhose?

Right.

But what he said was: “We'll be here,” and the both of them hung up with the mayor adding how anxious she was to meet the rest of the team.

There was a mirror on the wall over the table holding the phone and Jack Crow stared at his reflection in it, stared at it good and hard until some things fell away and some others came clear to him again.

“Asshole,” he whispered angrily at the face.

It was time to be a leader. So do some leader-type shit for a change, you whining bastard!

Rock and roll!

He spun around and there they all were, his team, watching and waiting and wondering what was going on.

He didn't tell them-this was his burden, godammit!

He gave them orders instead.

Get out. Get all the stuff you can carry easily and walk out of the hotel. Don't check out or in any way hint that you're not coming back soon. Women, take the limo.

Gents, I want.you all to...

“Carl? What's the range on that detector? Can you put the sensor in one spot and have it ring or whatever someplace else?”

Carl shrugged. “If it's not too far.”

“How about from this room to a truck parked down on the street?”

“Sure. I. . . Hey! What's going on?”

“Shaddup. Annabelle, take Davette and go to the SevenEleven on, I dunno, Mockingbird and Central, and get the number of the last pay phone in the row and start calling it after sundown every half hour. Don't stop moving except to do that. Adam? You go with them. Make sure they call from a different spot each time. In fact, you do the calling. Don't let them outta the car and don't let the driver stop the motor. You hear?”

Adam nodded. “Yessir.”

“All right. Let's go, folks. Now. The rest of us have got weapons to collect.”

No one moved. Then Annabelle stood up and faced him.

“Jack, I want to know what's going on!” Her voice sounded frightened.

Jack regarded her calmly. “I don't blame you. Get moving.”

"But I . .

“Woman! This is not a debate! Move!”

They moved.

At a quarter to nine their Chevy Suburban slid silently to the downtown curb. Cat was at the wheel. Jack sat beside him in the front seat, the crossbow between them. In the back seat Carl sat fiddling with his gadget.

Jack rolled his window down and began to chain-smoke and told the others to shut the fuck up until he said otherwise. They shut up.

At 8:54, on the dot, the detector went off like a fire bell. Carl and Cat jumped about a foot apiece. Jack just nodded to himself, a grim smile on his face.

“What,” asked Cat, staring up at the hotel, “does all this mean?”

Jack Crow took his eyes from the building apd faced him.

“Rock and roll. Same as always. Only more so. Hit it.”

They made their connection at the phone outside the Seven-Eleven. Crow told Adam where to meet them, hung up, got back into the Suburban, and ordered Cat to drive to the Antwar Saloon.

Cat did so. But nervously, with difficulty. For he found it bard to take his eyes from Jack Crow, whose silently roaring presence filled the cab.

Jack stomped through the saloon doors with Cat and Carl trailing him. He hushed the waitress who tried to bar their ascent to Felix's apartment. They found him at his desk beside the widow overlooking the bar. He had seen them coming.

Now he rose, frowning. “Look, Crow. I-”

“Cut the shit, Felix!” snapped Crow, striding toward him.

“But I-”

Jack's fist slamming onto the desktop sounded like a thunderclap. It made the lamp jump.

“I said cut the shit! There's no time!”

And it was suddenly very quiet. Slowly, Crow sat down in the visitor's chair. Just as slowly, Felix sat down in his own. They both lit cigarettes.

Then Jack leaned forward and told Felix what was what. In a calm, deliberate tone he explained about having to go to Cleburne, Texas, in the morning to fight vampires who not only knew they were coming but had arranged the trap just for them. Cat and Carl, standing by the door, exchanged pale glances.

“What do you mean it's a trap?” Cat interrupted.

Jack didn't bother to turn around. “Think back, Cherry. He called my name when he chased the truck.”

Cat blinked, thought back, went suddenly more pale.

“My God,” he whispered, almost to himself.

Felix listened without a sound, looking tight and grim and dark through the smoke, as Jack finished his monologue.

Jack was quiet for several seconds after he'd finished. Then he leaned backward in his chair and held out his hand. After a second Carl reached into a pocket and brought out a slim wooden box. Jack took the box without looking at Carl. He flipped the lid open and slid the box across the smooth desktop.

The silver bullets gleamed brightly in the light from the

lamp.

“You still use a Browning nine-millimeter?” he asked gently.

- Felix was staring at the bullets. He nodded. Then he looked up at Crow. “But I don't own one,” he added hopefully. -

Jack smiled. He snapped his fingers above his head. Cat stepped forward carrying a canvas bag. From inside he took and unwrapped from cloth three automatics and laid them heavily on the wood-grained desktop.

Then he stepped back.

Felix stared at the guns. He rose slowly, put his hands in his pockets, and stepped over to the window and gazed blankly down. No one spoke, watching him.

“I want fifty thousand,” he said after a while.

“Done.”

Felix nodded, looking miserable. Then he stepped to his phone and picked up the receiver. He pushed a button. Faintly, they heard the buzz of the phone at the bar below.

“Zuhere? Felix. You'll have to take over for a couple of days. Yes. Yes... No, I'm fine. Fine.”

Felix hung up. He stared through the window a few seconds longer. Then he lit a cigarette and put his free hand back in his pocket. When he turned back to them he said, “I meant it about the fifty grand.”

Jack Crow's laugh was strong and loud and pure. He jumped to his feet and clapped his hands.

“I oughta charge you!” He stepped to the center of the room and raised his fist into the air. “Don't you feel it? You're about to go fight evil. Real live goddamned evil. The real stuff. You get to fight for the good side. How many people ever get a chance to do that?” He laughed again, strode to Felix, and shook his fist under his face. “Don't you feel it?”

Felix stared at him in amazement. He laughed shortly, shook his head.

Damned if I don't, he thought with astonishment. A little.

“Well, I do!” cried Cat from behind them. And he found himself grinning wildly. The Return of Jack Crow, he thought to himself, starring Jack Crow.

He turned to Carl.

“Rock and roll!”

Carl smiled crazily back. “Rock and roll,” he echoed.

Felix peered incredulously at the other three. “I must be crazy!”

Jack laughed again. “You really think that?”

Felix didn't answer. But he really did think that. He shook his bead again. This time they didn't even need that girl, he thought.

And then he thought: I wonder what her name is?

He looked at Crow & Co., still bright and vibrant and ready.

I wonder if I'll live long enough to find out?

When he saw Jack Crow striding across the courthouse square-coming to get him-Felix turned and bent his head to light a cigarette and hide his screaming fear.

Crow was wearing full-length chain mail that covered everything from the soles of his boots to the top of his head with just the oval for his face left exposed. Around his waist was a thick black utility belt. Across his chest was a great white cross.

He does look like a crusader, thought Felix. Even if the chain mail was some high-tech plastic instead of steel and even if the cross was an electric halogen spotlight.

A crusader... I've got to get away from this man.

He had actually started to turn and walk away, when he remembered. He had taken the money. He had signed up. He was in.

They had him.

And all those periodic nightmares throughout his young life, thirty years of them, wrapped tight around his brain.

There had been no pattern to their details. Always a different setting and always a different enemy. But the endings were identical. Too many of them coming at him too fast, overwhelming him, besieging him in some claustrophobic no-exit room or with his back to some crumbling cliff or steaming quicksand or...

Or whatever. No way out. Too much evil. Coming too fast.

He would awake screaming with the feel of evil still ripping at his throat. And be would stay up all night drinking and trembling and trying to convince himself it was only a dream.

But he had always known better somehow. Always.

And now he looked down at his own little crusader outfit and he knew the dream had come to him at last and he knew he was going to die and he had never known such utter paralyzing terror.

He had thought he could handle it. It was his time, so what? Everybody dies, right? Right? Be cool. Stoic. That's a good word.

Stoic for shit.

He turned back to face Crow, who stopped a step away and stood and eyed him carefully.

“All set?” he asked.

Felix just stared. What the hell does he expect me to say?

Crow read the look, nodded, dropped his eyes. Then he turned and looked across the street at the shuttered building that was their target.

“Okay,” said Crow, still eyeing the building, “we'll be going in in a few minutes.”

He paused a moment, then looked Felix in the eye. “Right?”

Felix wanted to spit. Instead he sighed and nodded.

Crow strode over to where Joplin and Cat stood talking to the chief of police and some others on the courthouse steps.

The courthouse steps.

Not even a hundred yards, thought Felix. More like seventy. Or fifty.

And he turned around and around, sweeping over the empty setting where only a handful of people, most of them uniformed, remained inside the police cordon. The shops were all closed up. There was no traffic on the streets. And it was quiet.

And none of that mattered. This place still looked just like what it had always been: the safest place in the world.

Felix had spent most of his life in cities. But he had been brought up in a place just like this one and he knew what it was. It was the place the small-town world came together to buy and sell and laugh and joke and record deeds and vote and pay fines and see each other again today just like the days before and the days to come and it was safe, dammit! Safe! Maybe boring and maybe (certainly) provincial and maybe a lot of other things. But safe is what it was first.

Felix stared at the flagpole atop the courthouse building. As a boy he had been taught to walk toward that if he got lost from his parents while shopping. Taught to go there and go to the front steps and sit down and wait and not cry- don't worry-Mother and Daddy would soon come to find him and “you'll be safe there, son.”

During the last three nights at least six people had been slaughtered there in full view of the police, dragged screaming and pleading into the only abandoned building by hulking drooling ghouls. Usually the monsters howled when the worthless bullets and shotgun pellets slammed into them. Sometimes they didn't. But they never stopped, except to turn and hiss, their new yellow-gray fangs glistening red in the squad cars' whirling lights.

The only policemen to go in there after them were still in there.

Felix finished his cigarette and dropped the butt onto the sidewalk and flattened it with a chain-mailed boot and then stood there bent over and staring until the last mote of glowing coal went out.

He sat in the motorhome, at the little table in the motorhome, a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to his chain-mailed elbow, an untouched plastic glass of ice tea next to that, while Cat, also in chain mail, paced clinking back and forth amid the weapons, speaking with his hands and trying to...

Trying to what? Felix wondered idly, as if from a great distance, suddenly realizing that he had been so preoccupied with his own sense of dread and impending doom that he had not really been listening at all. He had nodded a few times when that felt polite, but he could not imagine, quite frankly. what Cat could possibly have to say that mattered. Except...

Except to say they had decided to call it off.

Felix drew out of his honor just far enough to find if that was it.

It wasn't. It was.... Well, now, Felix wasn't absolutely sure what it was. But it seemed that Cat was trying to convince him that vampires were real so he wouldn't be shocked or something when he saw them. Something about the difference between knowing something was so in your mind and feeling it was so in your gut.

Or something. It sounded to Felix like the standard lecture to new recruits and that was okay by him. As long as he was sitting in this motorhome getting a lecture he wasn't stepping into that building across the street. He wasn't in danger. He wasn't fighting monsters or being ripped apart by their fangs, which Felix had no trouble whatsoever believing in from his brain to his gut to his trembling fingers raising 1 cigarette to his lips.

So he just watched Cat pacing and talking and he 1oked about the trailer at the simple little meaningless items he might never see again after an hour, a bottle of scotch with the label torn, a fast-food carry-out sack, a cheap ballpoint pen with its cap all chewed up poking out of a rent in the carpet under the driver's seat, and he stared at these things, reveled in these things, rather than think about what was about to happen.

Anything but that.

I-don't-want-to-die-here he mouthed silently without realizing it.

About then Cat wrapped up his agitated presentation with a rousing clap of his hands.

“Okay?” he asked Felix excitedly.

Felix, who had no notion what the question was about, looked the other man in the eye.

“Okay,” he replied dully.

Carl Joplin opened the outer door of the motorhome and stuck his head inside.

“Father Adam's ready,” he said.

Cat nodded to him. “Okay,” he said.

Carl nodded in return and disappeared again, closing the door behind him.

Felix looked questioningly at Cat.

“Mass,” Cat explained.

Felix nodded. “Oh.”

Felix believed.

He knelt in the courthouse parking lot with the others while Adam, high-mass robes covering his own chain mail, conducted the service and he believed.

In God. In Jesus. In the vampires waiting across the road. In 'most everything around him. He believed the police standing over there in that little group were not going to help them. He believed the crew standing beside their ambulance were not going to save him. He believed this was all a trap, as Jack Crow had told him.

He believed he was going to die.

He even believed in their gear. He figured the chain mail would slow 'em down. A little. And be believed Holy Blessed silver bullets might slow 'em down. A little. And when Carl had ringed the buildings with his little detectors and turned them on, Felix believed the instant clanging alarm was, in fact, caused by the presence of vampires within the building. He believed his radio headset would enable Carl Joplin to hear his death shrieks.

He even believed in the Plan. At least, that it was a good Plan. And he turned his unseeing eyes away from the young priest and focused once more on the electric winch with its huge spool of cable and decided once again that Jack had had an inspired idea here.

Forbidden by the city powers to destroy a downtown building with explosives, which is what he would have preferred, Jack Crow had given up on the idea of trying to kill the goons while they were in the building itself. Too dark in there. Too many teeth. Too much to go wrong too fast.

No. Jack's plan was to get them outside, where the sunlight would do the work, and that's where the winch came in. Jack was going to fire that massive crossbow through a ghoul's chest, wait a second for the barbs to get lodged tight, then holler on the radio for Carl Joplin to start the winch pulling that long cable attached to the crossbow bolt, and with it the ghoul, right through the front doors of the building into the sunlight to burn.

Then Adam was to grab the cable and bring it back inside to attach it to another one of Jack's bolts. It was Cat's job to keep the monsters off Jack in the meantime. Felix was supposed to back up Cat.

Felix believed it was a good Plan.

He didn't believe it was going to work.

And he caught himself mouthing those words again.

Then the mass was over. They stood. It was time.

“Rock and roll!” barked Jack fiercely.

Felix stared at him. Then he took his position beside the others. He took several deep breaths, heard the others do the same. There was a brief distraction when some new cop type, a young redheaded man wearing a different kind of uniform, appeared beside the other cops and began arguing loudly with them.

Too late, thought Felix. Nothing that could be said or argued or written out or screamed was going to stop this thing.

Jack gave the signal and the four men stepped through the doorway into the dark.

Cooler in here, he thought before the stench lit him and he thought God-my God, what is that awful. . . Oh my God is that them? Is that the vampires? And he started to reach down and turn on the halogen cross so he could see, see what was making that awful smell, but then he remembered they weren't supposed to turn on their crosses because that would drive the monsters back and they wanted them coming, coming at them, for chrissakes, and Felix thought of that idea and wondered if Jack Crow was completely and totally insane- Let's get the hell out of here!

And then the lanterns came on beside him, one in Jack's hand and one in Adam's. Jack moved off to the right to place his and Felix heard his hard voice calmly instructing the priest to place his lantern farther to the left to give a wider range of view and everything seemed to be whizzing around Felix, his ears thumping and throbbing with his pulse and the slightest sound amplified in that cavernous dusty cement floor with the walls all torn out before remodeling and only the fifty-year-old support posts left spaced every dozen paces like a checkerboard and.. . Oh, yes! There in the dust in front of him he saw the sliding footprints going this way and that and crossing back over one another.

Oh, yeah. Somebody's been walking around in here. A lot of somebodies. A lot of somethings...

Damn-damn-damn, he couldn't seem to get set, couldn't seem to get placed, like he was always leaning backward ready to run but he wasn't going to run, was he? So why not just get set and placed or at least reach down and get your weapon in your hand...?

But he couldn't even do that. He knew he was wearing guns but he couldn't remember exactly where they were on his body and the notion of taking his eyes off the shadows for even a split second to find them, and having some fiend bolt at him slavering from out of the dark while he was looking down...

No. He couldn't move.

He was frozen, staring wildly into the darkness, gasping dry-mouthed and waiting to die.

Then BEEP.. . and Felix jumped a foot in the air before he remembered it was the vampire detector Joplin had given them to take inside. The others had bells on them but Joplin had converted this one to have one of those smug little electronic BEEPS.

“Cat!” growled Crow harshly in Felix's headset. “Turn that down.”

“Right, bwana” was the calm reply and in the corner of one eye Felix saw the blond silhouette in the right-side lantern bend to work the controls.

“More, dammit!” snarled Crow.

“'More' it is,” replied Cat in the same tone. Beep; . . Beep... Beep...

“How's that?” asked Cat. “It's okay,” said Crow.

Beep... Beep... Beep... Felix hated it.

Beep... Beep... Beep...

Felix hated it because he knew what it meant.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The faster it beeped the closer came those.

Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep

“Okay, sports fans,” whispered Cat, peering into the darkness directly in front of him, “here we go.”

She was fresh from the grave and slivers of skin peeled and curled at the corners of eyes glowing a red so bloody and deep they seemed almost black. Not yet a full vampire, but no longer a corpse-and totally unaware of self. She was no longer a she either, Felix knew. She was just a thirst-thing and he could by God feel her smelling the blood pulsing in their veins. And she came at them, came at them and it seemed she moved so damned fast though he knew it was just a lurching, dragging, walk.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Cat,” ordered Jack calmly, stepping in front of her and raising his crossbow, “shut that damned thing off.”

“Yes, bwana,” replied Cat serenely and in a moment all was quiet.

Except for the sound of the creature dragging itself on grave-rotted feet toward Jack.

And then the deep THONG of the crossbow and the awful punching crunch as the massive arrow split the woman's chest cavity and cracked out her back.

The impact drove her backward several feet, arms flung outstretched, but somehow she remained upright.

Felix stared in horror. My God! The damn thing splitting her is as big as she is and it didn't even knock her down!