“I changed my mind!” replied Dietrich as he turned toward the door.
Phyllis felt that she was now out of options, and being desperate to spare Carl and Brian from Ron’s earlier fate, she quickly pulled her Taser c2 model from her purse and fired 50,000 volts into Dietrich’s back before he made it to the door. Dietrich stopped immediately, but appeared to be unaffected by the voltage.
He turned to glare at Phyllis with a look of anger and disappointment on his face. “You little cunning deceiver!” he said to her with wrath. “You’re displaying vampire behavior already,” he added as he proceeded to cut the Taser wires in half with his long, black, razor-sharp talon, which grew from his index finger in mere seconds. “Do not force me to change my mind and kill you, instead of turning you tonight.”
“I’d rather die anyways than to live that miserable life with you that you described!” she replied. She reached under the counter and pulled out a .38 special revolver that she brought down from upstairs, just before he arrived, and raised its barrel to her right temple in a self-threatening manner. “I have no choice anymore but to choose death if you try to harm them and turn me tonight!”
Phyllis barely blinked before Dietrich was behind her in an instant, removing the gun from her hand and snapping the gun’s handle off with a mere push of his thumb. She was caught completely off guard by the supernatural speed with which he moved. “I have two hours left before I can transform you, and I will not get this close and have you ruin my plans by killing yourself!” exclaimed the furious Dietrich. He lifted Phyllis up as she gasped by placing his left arm around her, and under her left arm, and instantaneously whisked her upstairs, after also grabbing some rope off the store’s shelf during the process.
“What are you doing?” asked the frightened Phyllis as Dietrich threw her face down on a cot in an upstairs room and tied her wrist together behind her back, followed quickly by tying her feet together, as she struggled to resist, albeit in vain.
“You stay here like a good little girl, and I’ll be back for you in two hours,” he told her as he also placed a small cloth towel in her mouth to gag her with. “Now, I will go outside to have a chat with your two friends!” he exclaimed, her muffled pleas through her gag going unheard.
Carl and Brian had been parked outside the store and near the wood shed for five minutes, eyeing the front door, under its large, overhead nighttime security floodlight, thinking that it might be safe to go inside and talk to Phyllis, as they speculated that Dietrich had already gone. They opened the truck doors, and Carl walked around the rear of the truck, to Brian’s passenger side, wanting to take a peek inside the wood shed, which stood to their right, and curious of its contents, when they suddenly heard the chimes on the store’s front door jingle, and out of the store walked Dietrich, toward them, with an angry, inauspicious look on his face.
“Uh oh,” muttered Carl with fright, as he and Brian quickly opened the passenger door, grabbed their rifles, and pointed them toward Dietrich.
“Didn’t we recently go through a scenario like this with Buck’s werewolf already?” mumbled Brian to Carl.
“You’d think once in two days would be more than enough,” answered Carl.
“Gentlemen, I am so glad that you two dropped by at this time,” said Dietrich to them with scorn, while advancing toward them slowly, but in a bullying, intimidating fashion. “I thought I instructed you not to interfere,” he said in a scolding tone while gazing at Brian with disdain.
“Don’t come any closer, or we’ll shoot the Hell out of you!” demanded Carl to Dietrich, who was advancing from twenty yards away.
“Is that so?” responded the unwavering Dietrich in a cold, agitated tone. “I’ve been wandering this planet for 3,000 years, and I’ve been hunted by soldiers and hunters from almost every continent, who were far more respectable than you two imbeciles! From every century since I came to be, I’ve eluded Israeli and Roman armies, warlords and their warriors, samurai, ninja, cannibals, headhunters, even your so-called modern-day commandos, and the Mexican cartel drug lords have tried and failed to kill me!” he added in an arrogant and scornful tone. “But if you two think you have a chance of killing me, then go ahead and shoot me!” he said, mocking them. “But please know that when your rifles are empty, I will personally rip the heart out of your chest, Brian, and leave it along with the rest of your flesh and body for the ravens to feed upon, just after I’ve finished drinking your blood, and Carl will have both his legs broken by me, so he’ll be unable to flee, and will still be here for the newly transformed Phyllis to feed upon in under two hours from now!”
Carl and Brian looked at each other, having a serious look upon their faces, as if this were about to be their last hurrah and sight of each other, in a supposed last stand and futile attempt to shoot and kill him.
“I feel like I’m about to puke,” said Brian to Carl, feeling nauseated and doomed after learning of his death sentence.
“Oh, what the Hell?” said Carl. “Shoot!”
The two of them leveled their rifle’s telescopic sights onto the center of Dietrich’s chest and heart area, and opened fire, rapidly working the bolt actions on their rifles as they fired, ejecting the empty brass and firing again after speedily chambering another bullet so quickly that the discharge sounds from their rifles sounded as if semiautomatic weapons were being fired! KABOOM.OOM.OOM.OOM.BOOM.OOM.OOM.OOM.OOM. KABOOM, roared the sounds from both rifles combined, echoing off into the surrounding forest and village. Dietrich managed to elude the first two bullets from their first two shots, after moving sideways in a lightning-quick blur, but was hit with their last eight shots, as his body reacted with repetitive, involuntary jerking movements when the bullets penetrated his upper body like a piñata, which finally knocked him over backward, where he landed flat on his back on the snowy ground at their last two shots.
Brian and Carl stood motionless while the smell of the gun smoke cleared from the cool night air, and the last distant echo from their last fired gunshots drew silent, as they gazed at Dietrich’s lifeless and horizontal body, which lay face up.
“Do you think he’s dead?” asked Carl with a glimmer of hope. “I better go stab him through the heart with this wooden stake that I made earlier, just to be on the safe side,” he added as he pulled out a twelve-inch long wooden stake with a sharp, pointed end from inside his jacket pocket. “I carved out four of them.”
“Nice carving job,” replied Brian. “But be careful! He could be playing possum.”
“No, gentlemen, I am not dead, but still very much alive,” responded the furious Dietrich as he quickly stood back up, brushed the snow off the back of his pants and jacket, and continued his previous advancement toward them, but at a faster pace, so as to not allow them a chance to reload their rifles. “And you wasted your time carving those wooden stakes, for they will have no effect on me and will be useless! You’ve made me really upset now for putting bullet holes into my nice sport jacket,” he exclaimed with sarcasm and disdain as he continually advanced forward, while digging his right fingers into his bullet wounds, retrieving and pulling out the mushroomed lead, and tossing them to the ground as his mortal bullet wounds began to rapidly heal, as if he were never shot at all. “Do tell, where am I going to find a new sport jacket in this village? My bullet wounds have nearly vanished, but the holes in my expensive jacket will not supernaturally heal.”
“I’d be happy to buy you a new one, but am afraid that I’ll need a rain check,” answered Brian in a desperate attempt to humor himself before his death, now just mere seconds away.
Dietrich was closing in quickly and just five yards away, moving past the front of the truck, forcing Brian and Carl to stumble backward through the man-sized, hollow door frame, and inside of the dark wood shed, until they were trapped inside and backed up against a row of firewood stacked along the back wall, unable to move any further. Dietrich could have closed the distance in a split second and quickly killed them if he desir
ed, but seemed to enjoy his slow, methodical, and more intimidating advancement, like a cat stalking a mouse, which had proven to strike much more terror into his victim’s hearts, often paralyzing them with fear. Dietrich was now at the edge of the shed’s door, with Carl and Brian just inside and barely out of arm’s reach, when he suddenly stopped to gaze at them.
“Um, not that I’m complaining, but why did you just stop?” asked the petrified Carl to Dietrich.
“Why don’t you two step back outside for a moment and die like real men, instead of hiding inside a shed and dying like cowards?” he answered in deceptive fashion.
“Why should that make a difference to you?” asked the perplexed Brian. “I’m kind of surprised you stopped and haven’t killed us already. If you intend to kill us, just hurry up and do it, and spare us the bull crap drama!”
“Wait just a minute,” responded Carl, as if he just thought of something brilliant. “It’s a hunch, but I’m willing to bet that you can’t come into this shed, or any shed, without first being invited in, am I correct? I don’t know anything about vampires, other than in the movies, where a vampire always has to be first invited in, but it has to be the only explanation as to why we’re not dead yet,” added Carl while pointing his right index finger at Dietrich.
Dietrich began clapping his hands together as if to applaud him. “It appears that you’re not as mentally deficient as I thought,” he exclaimed. “Invite me in and I’ll end you both quickly and painlessly, or else, you can choose to hide in this shed until 9:00 PM, slowly fighting off the cold and dying most miserably later, when I force your hypothermic bodies out with fire into the waiting fangs of Phyllis and me. The choice is yours!”
“We’ll go with your second choice,” answered Carl, feeling a little cocky, as if Brian and he had just achieved a small morale victory over Dietrich.
“Very well then!” responded the angry Dietrich. “And just to make sure that you two don’t try and drive off in your truck...” He reached down with both of his hands, placing them underneath the cab of Carl’s half-ton truck, and rapidly lifted it up with the simplest of ease, tipping the truck over and onto its left side. “You two should also know that I have Phyllis restrained upstairs, unable to move, and helplessly awaiting my return at 9:00 PM, when I will gladly sink my fangs into her neck and change her into a vampire. Leave this shed to help her at your own peril, for I will be nearby, and I have exceptional hearing! If I so much as hear your footsteps walking out of this shed, I’ll return in a hurry and with a vengeance to finish what I originally intended to do.” Then he disappeared into the night.
“We have to help Phyllis and find out what she learned,” exclaimed Brian.
“My truck!” moaned the discouraged Carl. “He ruined my truck!”
“Forget about your truck,” replied Brian. “Insurance can pay for the damages. We need to get to Phyllis!”
“And will insurance pay for our bodies, too, when he hears us walking outside and leaving here, and instantly returns to break my legs and rip your heart out of your chest?” asked Carl with sarcasm.
“I’m hoping that he was bluffing,” answered Brian. “He could have just waited us out, or forced us out somehow, but for some reason, he felt the need to leave, not wanting to expend the extra energy on us right now. I’m guessing that he had to go search for another blood source and replenish himself.”
“I don’t try to get into the mind of psycho vampires,” quipped Carl, “maybe he’s taunting us, but if you happen to be right, he could be far away from here by now, in search of an animal. I vote that we go for it also! But first, I want to climb down into my truck and grab the rest of our ammo, not that it will do much good anyways. We should have two boxes left.”
“How are we supposed to kill that deranged freak when our bullets have no effect on him?” asked Brian with concern. “I sure hope Phyllis has some encouraging news.”
“Maybe Buck can kill him,” hoped Carl. “And even though our bullets didn’t kill Dietrich, at least they knocked him down, and possibly weakened him some. We need to try and shoot him again, just before Buck does his thing, and hopefully, it weakens and distracts him enough for Buck to sneak in and finish him. I just hope that Buck’s werewolf doesn’t lose all control and kill the rest of us at the same time!”
“Right now, I can’t think of any better idea, so we better make our move now if we’re going to do it,” replied Brian. “My wristwatch says its 7:45 PM now, which doesn’t leave us much time to get our answers. I’ll stay here in the shed and keep an eye out for Dietrich while you climb down into the truck for the rest of the ammo. If Dietrich shows up unexpectedly again, you can try to hold him off with your rifle while I make a mad dash for Phyllis.”
“My hero”, replied Carl jokingly
The two of them quickly glanced up into the sky and noticed that the stars were becoming brighter, and the lightened, rounded moon was inching its way up, higher and higher, meaning the time of reckoning was almost upon them.
CHAPTER 12
7:45 PM
Carl poked his head out of the shed’s rough, door-less entry, and carefully looked to his right and then to his left for any sign of Dietrich’s presence. “Seems to look clear,” he whispered. He left his empty rifle in the shed with Brian as he quietly inched his way out of the shed door, and began taking baby steps toward his truck, which lay on its left side just five yards away. His heart began to pound rapidly through his chest from adrenaline, as he wondered if each step he took toward his truck would be his last. Either he was about to have his legs broken by Dietrich or he would be killed instead. Just then, snow slid off the metal shed roof, making a loud thump as it hit the ground, nearly giving both Carl and Brian a heart attack! Carl breathed a sigh of relief, and then slowly continued his walk of bravery. Moments later, he finally placed his hands on his truck, took one last look around, and, after seeing no sign of Dietrich, began climbing his way up the underside of his truck and toward the passenger door, when it seemed safe to do so. He placed his left leg on the drive shaft and hoisted his 250-pound frame up, grabbing onto one of the exhaust pipes with his right hand, making him feel like a mountain climber who was scaling a rocky ledge.
So far so good, especially for a big guy like me, Carl thought to himself as he continued climbing, and glad that Brian’s theory about Dietrich seemed correct thus far. He finally managed to stretch his right arm up high enough to squeeze the handle of the passenger door with his hand. He lifted up on the handle and, having some good strength of his own, managed to pull the door open enough as to slide his left hand inside the opening, and lift the door up and completely open.
Brian felt some relief of his own from down below, when he watched Carl safely lower himself down into the truck through the opened passenger-side door.
“Found one of them!” Carl mumbled to himself as he noticed one box of ammo lying flat on the window of the driver’s door, and reached down to grab them while desperately looking for the other box. The box felt lighter than normal, and was found to only have ten rounds left inside when Carl opened the box to inspect it.
“Carl!” shouted Brian loudly, and with some urgency.
Carl heard Brian’s voice but could not see him, as the front of his truck and windshield were facing toward the front of the store. But Carl’s heart sank, as he could now see through his windshield the reason why Brian had warned him. Standing ten yards away and facing in his direction was a dark silhouette of a man, in the shadows and with the store’s floodlight at his back, who appeared to be wiping dried blood from around his mouth with a handkerchief after having just previously sprinkled snow on it for moisture. It was Dietrich.
“Gentlemen, did I not say that I would be nearby?” asked Dietrich as he began walking toward the truck, with Carl trapped inside. “I must say that I’m a little disappointed in both of you, and that you’re not inside the store, trying to save Phyllis, as I would have assumed. Instead, one of you would rather cow
er in the shed for safety while the other values the contents of the inside of his vehicle as more important than her.” He was mocking them.
“Sorry that we disappointed you,” exclaimed Brian to Dietrich, trying to mock him in return, while also hoping to draw his attention away from Carl.
Dietrich stopped five yards from the front of the truck, bent over to scoop up a large handful of sticky snow, and began packing it together, tightly and firmly, into a round ball, which was hard as a baseball when he finished. “Did you know that when I hunt for animal blood in the wintertime, I often find it an unnecessary waste of energy when attempting to chase after them in the deep snow?” he said as he continually kept packing away at the snowball, making it larger and even harder. “But instead, I find it much more effective to design a weapon, like this mere snowball. When packed hard enough, and thrown by me, it has a speed in excess of 300 mph and killing power of up to a distance of 200 yards.”
“Urn, what?” asked Brian aloud.
This can’t be good, thought Carl to himself while watching him from behind the windshield.
Dietrich finished packing the snowball and cocked his right arm back in a rearward motion, like a baseball pitcher preparing to deliver a 90 mph fast-ball, and let it fly like a blur into the windshield, shattering the glass with an explosion that pelted Carl with extreme force, giving him several cuts and abrasions to his face. “What did I tell you just before I left you here, Carl?” he asked, taunting them while walking slowly to the flipped truck. “Oh, yes, now I remember! I was going to break your legs, wasn’t I?”
Carl tried desperately to find an escape, pressing himself hard against the rear of the seat. But the only way out was through the broken windshield and toward Dietrich, who had just stopped in front of the truck, or climb back up and out the passenger door.
Village of the Full Moon Curse Page 10