Chapter Twenty-Six
I ENTERED THE house behind Hill's tall black armored figure, with Killian, only inches taller than me, and Jung, a bit taller than that, behind and to the side of me. Saville, who towered over all of us, had used the battering ram to open the door, and brought up the rear. I didn't glance behind and see him; I just knew that he'd be there. I trusted everyone in the room to do their jobs. His job was to cover the whole room, so that nothing came running into the room and surprised us while we executed the vampires. Jung and I, our job was to divide the ten kills visible in the room between the two of us. Hill stayed at my shoulder with his AR-15 covering me, in case one of the "kills" got too lively. Killian stayed at Jung's side to do the same for him.
The living room was just a normal living room with a couch, a love seat, and a beanbag chair deflating in front of a small television set, except for the vampires lying in a row. Most of them were in mummy bags fastened up completely over the body shapes. Two of them were just wrapped in sheets. In the movies it's all Dracula, Prince of Darkness, all coffins and candlelight, but most modern American vampires' lairs are more like slumber parties than dungeons. There was just no sense of presentation.
Saville opened the big drapes of the picture window behind us to let in the late-day sunlight. Most of these vampires were probably too young to move until full dark, but if any of them were old enough to move before that, sunlight in the room would prevent it. One, sunlight hitting the "coffin" substitute would simply keep them dead to the world. Two, if they were powerful enough to wake with the light hitting the outside of their hiding places, then feeling the heat of the sunlight would make them think long and hard about coming out early. Of course, once we started shooting them they might risk it, but it was the best precaution we had. When you hunt vampires, sunlight is always your friend.
The thick afternoon light filled half the room, letting us see that the sleeping bags were all different colors, as if they'd bought them all together at some kind of sale, or just wanted not to match so no one would use the wrong bag by mistake. One set of sheets was covered in cartoon characters. I hoped the sheets had been on sale, but worried that it was more than that. The figure underneath them looked small, but it was the fourth one on my side and fifth on Jung's side; we had a lot of shooting between us and it. I snugged my rifle to my shoulder and nodded at Hill. He knelt at the top of the mummy bag and opened it. It was a two-handed job to open most good mummy bags; that Hill was willing to have no active weapon in his hands and trust me to cover him was the highest praise that any of these men had for anyone. I concentrated like a son of a bitch and did my best to be worthy of that praise.
The hair was pale, but not as pale as the face. The face was young and probably female, but it didn't matter, and honestly I tried not to think about it. Hill snapped a picture of the face with a point-and-shoot camera; I sighted between those blessedly closed eyes, and pulled the trigger. The impact rocked me back a little, but it turned the vampire's face into a red ruin. It wasn't decapitation, but it was damn close, and with just one shot. Jung's rifle echoed mine. Sounds of distant rifles came from farther into the house: Brice and the others clearing the back bedrooms where the rest of the vampires were nesting.
Hill and I moved down to the next bag. Dark hair, pale skin; bang! African American, bigger, male; bang! Long blond hair, female; bang! Bald, older male; bang! The cartoon sheets were next.
Hill tried to just pull them back, but they were wrapped too tight. Jung was to his own sheet-wrapped figure, and Killian knelt beside Hill as they both tried to unwrap the little undead bundles.
Hill got ours unwrapped first, and the face was so young. No more than eight or nine when he died. Vampires that young are illegal; it's treated as child molesting, and bringing over someone that young will earn a vampire a death sentence. Most vampires would kill anyone that brought over a child this young themselves; no human laws were needed to tell them how wrong it was to do this shit. I had to believe this body had been dead for decades, long before the new laws, but as Hill snapped the picture, we didn't know that. This could be someone's missing child. Some little boy on a milk carton somewhere right there under my gun. Vampires are still the people they were before they died, for good or ill, so if this was someone's lost child, then they could have him back, but he'd never age, never grow. . . I'd never met a vampire that was under twelve at death that didn't eventually go mad.
Hill said, "Blake. "
I blinked, and I pulled the trigger on that dewy, fresh, dead face. It exploded in a red ruin, as if it had been an overly ripe melon, except melons didn't bleed, or leak skull and brains. Jung's vampire was older, at least in its teens. He pulled the trigger, and her head just became a fine red mist.
I prayed that both the kids had been the oldest vampires in the room. I did not want the photos we just snapped to be the last image the parents had of their darlings.
I looked down the line and every one of them was bloody. The sunlight behind us was fragile, and almost gone. We could go back down the line and put a bullet in each chest, but if they rose early now none of them had eyes to do vampire gaze shit with, or mouths to bite with, and just like that the vampires' main weapons were gone.
Jung and I started where we were, Hill and Killian peeling back the sheets and bags so we could see what we were aiming at. I was pretty secure with the heads blown to hell that they were dead enough, but when you're taking out a vampire's heart, it's better to see exactly what you're aiming at. It's always better to see what you're aiming at.
We went body by body outward, taking out the hearts this time. Even through the special earplugs my ears were ringing by the time we finished. The sun went down a breath later; I felt it go, like a hand through my heart, and a second after that I felt a vampire. I felt it wake.
"We've missed one!" I yelled.
Hill looked at the bodies. "They're dead. "
"Not this room. "
Killian got on the radio and said, "Blake says you missed one. "
"Everything's dead over here but us," Derry said.
Then the yelling started, and fresh gunshots. We fell back into formation, Hill first, me, Jung, Killian, Saville. We did it without asking, or needing to question each other. We fell back into the plan, except now we ran for the other rooms, our other men, toward the sound of guns and screaming, because that was our job, to run toward the trouble.
Kiss the Dead Page 26