“My apologies, Mr. Cutter, for our rudeness in abducting you and restraining you in that chair, but I am a feeble old man and would be most vulnerable to a man of your physical stature.” The old man had a gleam in his eye. A gleam that Charlie had seen much of in recent weeks and recognized immediately.
“You’re one of them.”
“One of them? You mean a vampire? No, Mr. Cutter, I assure you, I am just like you.” His teeth were beautifully white when he smiled. “My name is Dannus. Gregor Dannus. I brought you here because I have a certain vested interest in the outcome of recent events.”
“Don’t we all?” Charlie asked with a significant amount of sarcasm.
“Show some respect!” The ugly man growled and raised his hand to strike Charlie.
“Sparks!” The old man yelled in a surprisingly powerful voice that echoed throughout the chamber. The ugly man stopped mid-swing. “I am trying to build a rapport with Mr. Cutter. One that would be severely damaged should we choose to smack the hell out of him. Why don’t you wait outside? I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, Sir. As you wish.” The man named Sparks left the room but eyed Charlie until the darkness swallowed him. There was a loud rattle and clank as a heavy door was pulled shut somewhere Charlie couldn’t see.
The sound of a knife sliding back and forth on the old man’s dinner plate drew Charlie’s attention back. The man was lifting a bite to his mouth when Charlie spoke. “Where are we?” The old man stopped and set his fork back down with a bit of a sigh.
“Don’t you recognize the place? You’re in Glover’s fortress. In fact, the very room where my men subdued you. I just love this mansion. So well designed to a vampire’s purposes. Rowan always had quite the propensity for paranoia, you know. Always thought someone was out to get her.” He said with a chuckle.
“Her? Did you say her?”
Dannus put one hand over his mouth feigning innocence. “Oh dear. Did I let the cat out of the bag?”
“If Rowan is a woman, then who is the dead body in the other room?”
“Her servant. His name is not important. She has been concealing her identity for centuries. Her servant masqueraded as Rowan Glover so as to maintain her anonymity. Obviously, very few people even know she is female. I can tell you only one other thing with total certainty and that is that she is no longer here.”
Charlie was dumbfounded. “So, we never left. What about my friends?”
“Come now, Mr. Cutter. We both know they are not your friends. What kind of friends leave their man behind? They stayed as long as they could but my soldiers gave them quite the run for their money. In the end, they had to flee or risk losing their own lives trying to save you.”
“Your soldiers? You control those things?”
The old man nodded. “You’d be surprised how intelligent they are. Some of them even remember being human and will attempt to communicate in more ways than just grunts and growls.” The man lifted the fork again and raised it towards his mouth.
“Who’s the Golem?” Charlie asked. Dannus stopped before taking a bite and stared at Charlie. The silence weighed heavy in the room.
“Where did you hear that name?” He put the fork down again.
“I had some visitors a few weeks ago. They forced me to drink some blood and then told me it was a gift… from him. So, who is he?”
Dannus smiled. “The Golem is everyone and the Golem is no one. He’s a myth. He doesn’t exist. How can he? A vampire so old that the sun can’t burn him? It’s not possible.”
“Yeah, well I’ve seen a lot of things lately that shouldn’t be possible.” The old man’s blue eyes gleamed in the fire light, wise beyond his years. Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more going on here than met the eye. “What do you want from me? Are we buddies now? If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”
The old man threw his head back with a hearty laugh. “I definitely don’t want to kill you, Mr. Cutter. On the contrary, I want to help you.”
“Help me? How?”
“With information.”
“What kind of information?” Charlie asked.
The old man laughed. “Haven’t I given you a plethora of information already?”
“Not much of it useful.”
“There is one other tidbit of information you might appreciate. I am a precog, just like your friend, Julia, is it? I’ve seen things.”
Charlie trusted this situation even less than before. The old man knew too much. “So why in the hell should I trust you?”
“Because you’ve got to trust someone sometime, Mr. Cutter. And besides, I’m going to tell you where your friend is.” That piqued Charlie’s interest. And worse yet, he had let it show. “Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. Would you like that, Mr. Cutter? Would you like to know where Maggie is?”
Charlie shifted violently in his chair and it gave a screech across the wood floor but the ropes still held him fast. “I swear to God if you’ve hurt her you son of a bitch!”
“Mr. Cutter, please.” Dannus said in a quiet but stern voice. “I said I was trying to build a rapport between us and I meant it. I have not harmed, nor am I in possession of Miss Stone.” He paused to let Charlie calm down. “You really should try to control your temper. Anger has a way of taking over if you let it.” He paused again. When Charlie said nothing, he continued. “Maggie is being held outside the city by an old vampire named Ronald Kinder.”
“Ronald Kinder? The wacko late-night radio talk show host?”
“Ahh, so you know him!”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of him. How do I find him?”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Cutter. I’m quite certain he’ll find you. Sparks!”
The big man opened the door and waltzed back into the room. “Yes, sir.”
“Come help me. We’ll be leaving now.” Dannus said with a grin and then turned back to Charlie. “I trust our newfound relationship is…” he searched for the right word. “amicable?”
“For now, I suppose.” Charlie replied though somehow, he felt much like Faust making his deal with the devil.
Dannus nodded to Sparks and Sparks placed a small key in Charlie’s hand. “Your car is waiting outside. Don’t try to follow us.” He whispered in Charlie’s ear. The two of them left the room, Dannus limping slightly on his right leg with the noticeable clack of his cane on the wood floor after every other footfall. The orange candlelight glowed over his polished wingtip shoes. Dannus and Sparks drifted into the darkness and melted away like ghosts. Charlie fumbled with the key Sparks had given him and it wasn’t long before he had his handcuffs off. With his hands free, it was much easier to wriggle out from under the coils of rope around his chest. He untied his legs and stood, stretching a little stiffness out of them. He was moving towards the door when his stomach grumbled and he thought of the steak Dannus was eating at the table. He looked back and there it sat at the table. One large chunk of meat cut from the filet, still pierced on the tines of the fork. Dannus hadn’t had a bite. Charlie thought about eating it as his stomach grumbled again, but didn’t trust it. What if it’s a trap? What if it was all a trap? Who knows if it’s even beef? He couldn’t risk it. Instead, he grabbed the steak knife next to the plate and felt his way towards the door.
The door to the hallway was open and he slipped out, listening for signs of anyone other than him. He couldn’t help the nagging feeling that he had missed something. What had David said to him? His friend, Mr. D? Could Mr. D have been Dannus? He shook off the thought and proceeded down the hall. It was dark but he followed it back towards the large room where they had found Glover’s servant’s dead body, expecting to find an army of hell dogs waiting for him, but no one was there. The room was dark but he could see a thin line of daylight in the distance. He moved towards it and his hand was soon on the handle of the front door. He whipped it open and early morning light poured into the room. He took one last quick look around the room and stepped out into daylight. Hi
s eyes slowly adjusted to the light and what he saw brought a smile to his face. The police truck he and Maggie had stolen and loaded with supplies sat in the driveway a few yards away.
The truck was just like he had last seen it. The small arsenal of weapons in the rear cargo area, the dehydrated food, and even the cases of bottled water were undisturbed. He found the keys in the console and started it up. The powerful engine purred.
He knew he had to find Sylvia and the others. They would have an idea as to where to find Kinder, he hoped. And if they didn’t, maybe Julia could help him. He didn’t like the idea, but he was tied to them now. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to have someone else to watch his back. He sighed. Nothing he could do about it, really. This new world was just far too treacherous to go it alone. He put the truck in gear and drove away from the mansion. He wondered if Dannus was still in the mansion or if he had had that brute, Sparks, smuggle him out in a wooden box of some kind. He chuckled to himself as he imagined Sparks driving his master around all day in a hearse, Dannus sealed up tight in a coffin in the back like some B-flick vampire movie from the ‘80s. “No way that frickin’ guy’s not a vampire.” Charlie mumbled to himself as he pulled away from the mansion.
He knew the area pretty well so he didn’t have too difficult a time finding his way back to the motel. But once there, what he found was a mess. There were a number of corpses slowly burning in the parking lot and the motel room was totally vacant aside from the splashes of blood on the walls. Some of the blood was beginning to smolder under the bits of sunlight that crept into the room. He checked the bathroom. It was the last place he had seen Julia and the other women they had left behind. Still, there was no sign of any of them. If the vampires had returned after the skirmish at Glover’s mansion, they hadn’t stayed long. Charlie felt a mixture of sadness and relief. He had wanted to be rid of them. But like so many things in this world, sometimes getting what you want can be so much worse than what you had. Now he was truly alone.
He went back down to the police truck and opened the back doors. He was sitting on the rear bumper eating an MRE when he saw a large group of people moving slowly down the street towards him. It wasn’t a mob as far as he could tell. They didn’t even seem to have much purpose. Most of them were plodding along like they had been walking for days. He wasn’t even sure they were together. Most of them were scattered around the street like buckshot, traveling in small groups of three or four, but there must have been dozens, if not hundreds of them.
Charlie watched as most eyed him suspiciously and shuffled towards the other side of the street to stay as far away from him as they could while they passed. One group didn’t move away. A man, a woman, and two young children were trudging towards him, too exhausted to go in any direction other than a straight line. The man didn’t notice Charlie until he was close enough for Charlie to call out to him.
“What’s going on? Where’s everyone going?” Charlie asked.
The man jumped a little and stared at Charlie with tired eyes. He stepped in front of the children and urged them out into the road a little, away from Charlie.
“It’s alright. I won’t hurt you.” Charlie said.
The man continued to stare at him. His eyes flicked down to the MRE Charlie was munching on and then back up to Charlie. “You guys hungry?” Charlie asked.
The man looked down at the children and then back up to Charlie. “Yes. We haven’t eaten in a while.”
Charlie reached into the back of the truck, feeling around for the box of MREs. He took out a couple of meals and tossed them to the man. Then he grabbed a couple of water bottles and threw them to the woman, mentally taking stock of the small supply he had left for himself.
“Thank you.” The man said as he eagerly opened one of the MREs and handed a few packets of food to the children.
Charlie looked down at the dirty faces of the children and his heart went out to them. What kind of horrors would invade a child’s dream when they were faced with the horror of vampires while awake? He felt a lump in his throat and did his best to force it back down. “So where is everyone going?” Charlie asked again.
“They’re turning people away from the city.” The man said, sounding totally defeated. “They say there’s no more room. They told us to go to Brookfield or Jackson where there are other colonies taking shape.”
Charlie was horrified. “They just left you to fend for yourselves? They didn’t even have a bunch of military transports to carry you?”
“There’s a convoy leaving in an hour but they couldn’t take all of us.”
“You have any way to defend yourself?” Charlie asked him, knowing full well what kind of evil lurked about during the night and the daytime. The man shook his head. Charlie reached down and removed his ankle holster that held a snub nose revolver.
The man’s eyes opened wide. He stared at the gun like it was more evil than any vampire he had ever seen. “I.. I can’t.” He stammered. “I don’t even know how to use a gun.”
“You’ll live longer if you learn.” Charlie looked at the children. “And so will they.” He thrust the gun at the man again. “There’s no safety. You just point it where you want it and shoot.” Reluctantly, the man accepted the gift. Charlie grabbed a box of ammo for the revolver and handed it to the man as well. “I only have one box so make ‘em count.”
The man looked at the bullets for a moment, then fished them into his backpack and turned to leave. Charlie looked at the children again. His heart ached for them but he had his own battle to fight and he certainly wasn’t going their way. “Hey, wait!” He yelled as they were walking away. They stopped and turned towards him. He walked to a minivan a few parking spaces away and smacked the window with the butt of his handgun, shattering it. He opened the door and began to fumble around underneath the dash looking for the right wires. Charlie’s dad had blown milk out of his nose the day Charlie told him that the Army had taught him how to hotwire cars. Being able to secure transportation was an invaluable skill when trapped deep behind enemy lines. Charlie found the two wires he needed and tore them from the fuse box. He clacked them together until the starter turned over and the engine fired up.
Proud of himself, Charlie stood, turned around, and stared down the barrel of the revolver he had just given the man. The man was sweating profusely and his hand was shaking. “Maybe we’ll just take your truck instead.” He said to Charlie as the woman gasped behind him and clutched the children tight.
Charlie snatched the gun from the man’s hand in the blink of an eye and popped the man on the nose just hard enough to sting and make the tears flow. “Oh! Gawd!” The man yelled and bent over, holding his bloody nose. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He yelled with his hand out, pleading for mercy. He scrambled over to the children and covered them with his big arms, trying to protect them as best he could. “Please don’t hurt them! I’m sorry!”
Charlie just sighed. “I can’t say that in your situation I wouldn’t have done the same thing.” He said to the man. “But I can’t go the way you are going and I can’t give you everything I have. Take the minivan and get out of here.” He stepped aside and waved the family into the van. They climbed in eagerly and hurried to close the doors. Charlie stood at the driver’s side window looking at the man but he was too embarrassed to look Charlie in the eye. Charlie handed the gun to the woman this time. “Pick up as many people as you can and take them all to Jackson. If I find out you tried to rob anyone again, I’ll find you.” The man nodded quickly. Charlie knew he could never back up a threat like that but he was counting on the man being scared enough to believe it. “Go.” He told the man and the minivan backed out and then tore off down the road.
Charlie had returned to the back of the truck to finish his meal when he heard a commotion across the street. Four or five men were forcing a woman into a nearby alley. Charlie hurried to lock up the truck and ran towards the alley. By the time he made it to where they were, the men had the woman on the ground
and were trying to tear off her clothes.
“Hey!” Charlie yelled but the first fist was already flying in his direction. It was a clumsy haymaker of a punch and Charlie sidestepped it rather easily. He caught the man’s arm by the wrist and elbow and threw him head first into the brick wall of the building behind him. The man hit with a sickening crunch and fell limp.
He had drawn the attention of the other four men and three of them were converging on him while the last held the woman down. Charlie drew his forty-five and pointed it at the head of the first man he saw. The man reached for the gun in his waist band but barely had it out before Charlie’s shot ripped him a hole between the eyes. He moved the gun over to the other two who were reaching for various weapons in their belts but stopped when the gun was trained on them.
“Alright man!” One of them yelled. “I give! I give!” He yelled, looking more angry than scared.
“Get out of here.” Charlie motioned with his gun. The man holding the woman let go of her and stood up cautiously, glaring at Charlie. The three of them moved slowly down the alley while Charlie kept the gun on them. Charlie holstered his weapon as they passed but the man closest to him drew a small pistol from his waistband. Charlie grabbed it before he could swing it around and pointed the man’s arm at the other two men as they were trying to converge on him, rattling off a few rounds at each of them. Both men fell to the ground, screaming. Then Charlie turned the gun inward on the third man and emptied the gun into the man’s midsection. He sank to the ground as the crimson holes opened in his back. He let the last man’s body fall to the ground and turned to the woman. “Are you alright?” He asked.
She looked like a deer in headlights. The torn sleeve of her jacket hung down around her wrist. She had a pretty, yet very plain and unremarkable face. She looked up at him with big round eyes. “Thank you.” She said. “How can I ever repay you?” She ran up and threw her arms around him. “What is your name?” She asked, still holding him in an embrace.
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