“Fine. Fifty million dalas.”
“Don’t make me laugh. We’re not talking about a kid looking for his allowance here. With this, you’ll be able to make people who can go about their lives just as they do now and only have to drink blood once or twice a month—you follow me? Naturally, they’d be able to walk in the light of day. They could fall into water without drowning. And they wouldn’t need to eat. You could blast ’em with a rifle or laser or whatever and the damage still wouldn’t kill ’em. Plus, their personality won’t change at all. There’s nothing but advantages to this, right? You don’t go offering a lousy fifty million dalas for something like that.”
“Make it five hundred million dalas, then,” the mayor said, smiling broadly.
The offer had just grown tenfold, but Pluto VIII shook Lori’s head from side to side. “Five hundred billion dalas—and not a bit less. After all, you’re getting the secret to making supermen. And, as an added bonus, I already borrowed this little lady’s body and got rid of the Vampire Hunter who was holding up the works. So you won’t be getting any further discount from me. Hell, you want me to go tell everyone how you cut my throat wide open while I was in your maid’s body? I hate to break it to you, but I can get into rotting corpses, too. I could work her vocal cords and have her testify if I had to.”
After thinking a bit, the mayor nodded and said, “Okay. It’s all for the good of my town. You’ll get the price you named—five hundred billion dalas. But I’ll need one thing to sweeten the deal.”
“And what would that be?”
“In place of the Vampire Hunter you killed, I’ll need you to take care of the last vampire plaguing us—he’s one of my experiments gone wrong.”
Pluto VIII said nothing.
“The man I let on board two hundred years ago gave me a certain chemical formula and a procedure for making humans into vampires. However, it proved too difficult for me to complete successfully. I had to wait two long centuries for a pair of geniuses like Mr. and Mrs. Knight to be born before my hopes could be realized. But then they ran out on me at the last minute. Didn’t care for my orders that the fruits of their labor only be used on the residents of our town. They wanted to use it for the good of the whole world. The fools,” Mayor Ming spat. “There’s only a small handful of people who actually want to live in peace. Just try giving something like that to the world below. Before you knew it, they’d start murdering each other. Those who were going to live in peace would only wind up courting death. I conducted my own research without their assistance. Though two of my guinea pigs came extremely close to success, it was simply beyond my power to root out the vampire cruelty budding within them. And, unfortunately, both of them escaped. One of them targeted my daughter to exact his revenge, but he was destroyed by the Vampire Hunter. The other one is still active—spreading the vampire bacteria within him everywhere he goes.”
“That’s rich,” Lori—or rather, Pluto VIII—said, clutching her belly as he laughed. “Sounds to me like the situation is proceeding just like you hoped it would. Care to tell me why you want the vamp killed?”
“The cruelty of the Nobility is so great, it drives even them mad. I’m sure you’re aware not only of what their kind did to us, but also how vicious the disputes were that raged between fellow Nobles. I want the life of the Nobility. However, at the same time, that life must be one of eternal peace.”
“You’re a greedy cuss, I’ll grant you.”
“Say what you will. It would be difficult for me to say the present strain of Nobilitation would suffice, no matter what we might try. You’ll have to hurry and dispose of him before he turns every last person in town into an imitation vampire. And if you don’t like that, then the whole deal is off.”
“Okay,” Lori/Pluto VIII said, nodding. “I’ll drop your freak with one shot. Consider it as good as done.”
The intercom buzzed loudly.
“What is it now?” the mayor fairly barked.
“The town is approaching a plateau. Preparations for landing have already begun.”
“Aha,” Pluto VIII said, eyes gleaming. “Then I guess this must be the destination that got fed into your computers. It should be kinda fun to try and figure out why he’d do that.”
“If he input these coordinates, it’s pretty obvious that once we get there he’ll gain some advantage. Hurry up and get rid of him.”
“Understood.” Nodding his agreement, Pluto VIII got up. “You said there’s already been some victims, right? That’s just too damn funny. Let’s hope some of them at least wanted to be vampires . . . ”
-
Leaving the mayor’s home, Pluto VIII felt an unspeakably weird aura envelope his borrowed body. Twilight was approaching. The aura wasn’t particularly concerned with him individually—it filled the very air. A vast number of sources for the unsettling emanations were moving about nearby.
“Well, I’ll be damned. The ol’ mayor sure took his sweet time moving on this, and now it looks like we’re talking about more than half the town—this place is a freaking undead paradise,” Pluto VIII muttered, walking down the street on Lori’s beautiful legs.
A presence soon stirred in his vicinity.
“Came to play, did you?” Pluto VIII muttered, and Lori stopped in her tracks.
In the feeble darkness stood a motionless figure with black gloves on. The weird atmosphere seemed to radiate most strongly from his body.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Pluto VIII laughed. “I don’t know where the hell you’re taking this town or even why, but it’s all over now. I’ll make quick work of you, then get off this ride—once I get what I’ve got coming, of course. The know-how that made you immortal should fetch me a nice price elsewhere, too. It’s too bad you won’t get to see your buddies multiply, but you’ll have to get over that.”
Though it was unclear how exactly Pluto VIII manipulated Lori’s supposedly nonfunctioning vocal chords, he had her talking a blue streak. He then made a broad wave of his right hand in his foe’s direction.
The instant it looked like the flash of black was going to buzz through the foe’s heart, the vampire sailed silently over Pluto VIII’s head. With a speed that staggered the imagination, the vampire launched a kick.
Evading the blow with unbelievable agility for a man in a young lady’s body, Pluto VIII hurled his disk-shaped weapon with a scooping motion. The weapon’s aim was true, and it quickly ripped the vampire open from crotch to chest and showered the road with bright blood.
“Got ’im!” Pluto VIII shouted through the beautiful girl’s face.
It was only a second later that same face froze solid. The darkness behind where the fiend had collapsed had just sent forth a tall youth of unearthly beauty.
“No, not you . . . ” Pluto VIII groaned. “It can’t be . . . I mean, even a dhampir . . . You couldn’t just take a stake through the heart . . . ”
“Too bad.” D’s soft voice ripped Pluto VIII’s heart from his chest. “Tell me what you discussed with the mayor.”
Pluto VIII backed away. Though he was looking for a chance to run, he realized that would be impossible.
“The girl’s parents told you something, didn’t they?” D said, but Pluto VIII couldn’t even tremble at his softly spoken words. “Probably where they hid the procedure and formula they’d perfected for making humans into Nobility. Why would they leave something like that here in town when they ran off? Answer me that.”
“Because they were ready to die.” Perhaps Pluto VIII had reconciled himself to the notion of fighting D, because his voice was incredibly calm. “Think about it. They’d always had an easy life, safe and secure in their little town. What could they do out on the Frontier? Even if they had the tools for it, they still didn’t have the heart. And Mr. and Mrs. Knight knew it. But what the two of them accomplished was just too big for them to throw away. Maybe they wanted to help the future generations or something, but I’m sure the better part of it was due to the lust for
fame. And, after some consideration, they couldn’t think of anyplace safer to hide it than this town. Is that a heartbreaking tale or what? Dying like dogs, forgotten out in some far corner of the Frontier after all they did . . . So, you know, I figured I might as well use what they found to earn myself a little coin . . . ”
“Did you kill the Knights?”
“What do you mean . . . ?” Pluto VIII’s eyebrows rose. He looked ablaze with indignation.
Ever serene, D continued, “I don’t think it likely a pair of chemists would fail to notice their trailer’s nuclear reactor was malfunctioning. They went outside and got eaten. Now, no matter how sheltered those scientists might’ve been, there’s no way they wouldn’t have known how dangerous it was to go outside on the Frontier in the dead of night. Unless, of course, you promised them they’d be safe.”
“Hey, wait just a minute there!” Pluto VIII protested, sticking out his right hand to stop that train of thought. “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I saved the little lady.”
“Yes, because I was there. Molecular intangibility lets you go right through radiation. You couldn’t bring yourself to let the dragons eat her, but figured you could kill her easily enough inside the vehicle—and that’s where you made your mistake.”
“You’re unbelievable. You’re just a walking heap of suspicion.” A smile zipped across the pretty young face Pluto VIII was using. A wicked grin he hadn’t shown before. “Though you’re right about some of that stuff. You know, when I first met you I got a real bad feeling, and it looks like I was right on the money.”
“What was the mayor’s aim?” D said, as if he hadn’t heard a word of Pluto VIII’s chilling admission. “To turn all the townspeople into Nobility—into vampires?”
For a brief instant, D’s longsword danced out and split the twilight with stark, white flashes. A pair of figures who’d been closing on him from behind silently fell to the ground.
With that momentary weakening of D’s uncanny aura, Pluto VIII was swallowed by the darkness. “It’s too late, D,” he called back. “Too late. These folks have all been infected by the mayor’s failed experiment. And now they’re just gonna keep on multiplying. This town is finished. Well, it’s just what the mayor hoped would happen. Trying to turn human beings into perfect Nobles is just flat-out impossible.”
He was probably right. The visitor two centuries ago, the mayor, the Knights—each of them probably had a dream. The town rode on a dream, was in fact made of dreams. And now the town was waking from that dream. Waking with the worst possible results.
“I didn’t wanna have to throw down with you,” Pluto VIII said, “but there’s no way around it now. Let’s do it. I’ll see you again in hell, fates willing!”
The instant D realized the baneful air directed at him was melting into the darkness, he shut both eyes. His longsword went into action. It had no problem at all slicing the disk blade into pieces that scattered through the air.
D charged. Around him, the wind roared.
There was nothing Lori/Pluto VIII could do. D’s fist sank into the girl’s delicate solar plexus, but it swept right through her body as if her body was mist. Once again, the superhuman ability known as molecular intangibility had come into play. Lori’s body had been transformed into a runny, shifting shadow.
D turned around. Like a tuft of grass fluttering in the breeze, the shadow billowed down the street and faded into the ground without a sound. Not bothering to watch the black tip of its head disappear, D looked instead into the distance, at the vast expanse of sky and earth.
The route some mysterious hand had put the cursed town on carried them now over ruins that stretched as far as the eye could see. Massive stone pillars, canopies, and streets stood naked and dejected in the lights shining from the belly of the flying town. Though it went without saying that all of these ancient constructs were cracked and crumbled and otherwise reduced to terrible rubble by the ravages of wind and time, for some reason this land had an even ghastlier atmosphere. Out on the Frontier, ruins that’d belonged to the Nobility weren’t particularly rare. Nevertheless, this land didn’t stir the deep feelings of loneliness usually associated with such sites. This place suggested only one thing—an unsettling evil. And D alone knew the form that evil would take.
From out of the shadows of meandering rows of stone pillars, shapes stirred as if they’d noticed the coming town—human shapes, moving as if enraged . . . or overjoyed.
“At last . . . we’re here . . . ” said a desperate sigh of a voice that made D turn. It was a dark, blood-spattered figure lying in the road a few yards away. Even after D saw that it was the same unnatural creature Pluto VIII’s disk blade had bisected, his expression never changed.
“So, you were the one guiding the town?” He put the question to the corpse just as he would to any living person.
“That’s right. Everyone in town has what it takes to become one . . . ” he said, his voice weak, his breath ragged. By “one,” he no doubt meant one of his kind. “This is where . . . all the failures meet. Not alive, but . . . unable to die. Cursed with an endless hunger, and a future without dreams . . . no place could be more fitting for the people of this town.”
“Six more hours?” D muttered. That was how long it was until dawn. Such a short time for the tremendously long engagement that was about to begin.
“The failures number over five thousand . . . Will the living prevail, or will death sing its song of victory? No . . . It won’t be either. That’s what makes this the perfect fate.” His final words mixing with laughter and a death rattle, the figure collapsed on the ground once more, never to move again.
Destruction echoed from somewhere in the distance. No doubt the vampirized townsfolk were attacking another house. Even if the law enforcement bureau had gone into action, with things this far along they wouldn’t have been able to handle the situation. Besides, they’d probably already succumbed as well . . .
Glancing briefly down the road—in the direction of the hospital—D set off for the navigational control center. In no time at all he was there. About a dozen workers were thoroughly engrossed in inspecting their weapons. An extraordinary tension filled the room.
On seeing D, the mayor showed more relief than hostility. “I suppose I should thank you for coming,” he said.
“Take a good look down there,” D said softly. “This is the end of the road you started them on. Down there, five thousand things that couldn’t become Nobility are waiting for five hundred living people. They think the residents of your town will make fitting companions.”
“They were failures.” The mayor looked tired. “But we were going to be a perfect new breed of humanity. A creature with the mind and heart of a human and the immortal flesh of a Noble, reveling in an eternal life free from the filth of the mortal world. I may have failed, but the Knights succeeded. And as soon as they did so, they tried to get out of town.”
“The vampire who attacked your daughter was one you made, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. I made two, and both of them escaped. One of them turned his fangs on my daughter, the other one is spreading his germs all over town now.”
“Half the town’s already been turned into vampires. If you want to hire me to do it, I’ll take care of them.” Despite the present situation, a Hunter was always a Hunter.
“Is this the end of everything, then?” The mayor put both fists to his forehead. And then, looking at D, he smiled with satisfaction. “No, not yet. So long as there are still decent folks in this town, my dream will never die.”
Frigid light filled D’s eyes. If one was mad for having a mad dream, then the mayor was already out of his mind.
Abruptly, the ground tilted forward. Some unsecured machinery crashed against the mayor’s shoulder. No blood came from him, but blue lightning crackled out of the wound. He was a cyborg.
“Touchdown in seven seconds . . . ” a technician clinging to a control panel exclaimed.
The town from the sky was descending to the earth it was never supposed to meet.
“Six seconds . . . ”
In the ruins below, countless things were starting to stir.
They’re here! They’re here! More of our kind have come!
The grating sound of lids being pushed open on coffins of stone, wood, or steel, and the putrid stench. Pale hands protruded from the graves, and crimson eyes gazed out.
“Four seconds . . . ”
As Lori headed for a dilapidated building, Dr. Tsurugi came running up behind her.
“Three seconds . . . ”
The town was silent. As if no one had been there from the very start.
“Two seconds . . . ”
A disk blade gleamed in Lori’s right hand. It was actually a solidified chemical compound that would disappear once it’d served its purpose.
“Zero!”
Before the jolt threw the people into the air, the thunder of the impact shattered the windows of every house. Lori and the physician rolled across the ground. The shock wave became a heavy wind that blasted through the town, knocking houses at an angle and snapping off trees. Half of the townspeople were injured in some way or another. The other half were actually injured as well, but it didn’t bother them.
“Engine nozzles have been damaged.”
“We have cracking in the convection pipes.”
Voices shot back and forth across the control room in confusion.
“How long will it take to input a new course and get airborne again?” the mayor asked.
“Four hours minimum.”
“Do it in two.”
“Roger.”
D ran to the entrance. Warped by the impact, the iron door wouldn’t budge an inch. D hit it with his shoulder. By the time the door hit the ground, sending scraps of metal flying every-where, D’s form was already racing down the darkened streets.
Tale of the Dead Town Page 15