-
With silent footsteps, death’s countless shapes were closing in on the town. Scrawny hands imbued with the strength to snap trees in two reached for the entrance hatch on the bottom of the town’s base. The air outside began to stir with the dim sound of them pounding away at the door with their fists.
“They’re getting in!” a bloodstained controller cried out.
“Relax. Even with the strength of a Noble, they couldn’t break through that hatch,” the mayor said as he smeared repairing compound on his shoulder wound. “We just have to hold out for two hours. Hook some power lines into the outer walls and the barrier. Juice them to a hundred thousand volts.”
“Roger!”
Soon, the whole town was enveloped in pale light. The front rank of vampires reeled backward, smoking and giving off sparks. All of them had their hair standing on end.
“We did it!” one of the operators shouted.
“It’s no use. The voltage is too high,” another worker muttered.
One after another the shadowy figures emerged from the darkness. From behind stone columns and under domes. Out of the very ground. New bodies piled on top of the charred ones. Fire burst from the new ones, too. Planting their feet on the shoulders of the ones below them, they put their hands to the outer wall and began to scale it.
“They should be dead . . . but they’re climbing up it,” someone said.
And to that, someone else replied, “The Nobility are immortal . . . ”
“Raise the voltage!” the mayor ordered. “We’ll burn them down to the marrow of their bones. Deputies and security, head outside and shoot any intruders. We can’t let a single one get on board.”
The light had lost its bluish tint and was now stark white. The figures scaling the outer wall crumbled like clay figures cracked by the hot sun.
“They’re running! We’re saved!” someone shouted jubilantly at the sight of the retreating figures on the control room’s screens.
“Don’t let your guard down. They still have time yet. They’ll be back again for sure. And we can’t count on the barrier. Get outside and start shooting.” As the relief of the present crossed the mayor’s face, so did the fears of the future.
-
Dwas out in the middle of the street. The glow of the barrier had vanished, and, aside from the lingering stench, the town was peaceful and quiet. The people were now either locked in their homes cowering from this new threat or out seeking the blood of others. It seemed the latter had all became one with the darkness while spreading their death.
Figures appeared in front of D, and behind him as well. Crimson eyes filled with an atrocious hunger, they edged closer. It seemed that almost everyone in town had been turned into a fiend. There wasn’t anyone left for him to protect now . . . aside from two people.
Something flew past the Hunter with the speed of a swallow. D knocked several more away with his left hand, and all the rest sank into the chests of the approaching figures.
Cries of pain split the darkness. The missiles were wooden wedges from stake-firing guns. The men from the law enforcement bureau didn’t have time to fire a second volley, as people pounced on them from the roofs of various houses.
D’s longsword flashed out, and several figures who’d been run through the chest fell to the ground. All of them were townspeople.
“Can’t hold them off any longer. Prepare to abandon ship,” D ordered the frightened, faltering lawmen as he lowered his bloody blade.
“We can’t do that. There are tons of them outside. Wherever we go, they’ll kill us. We’ll just have to wait for daybreak,” one of them said in a hollow voice. The only emotion coloring it was a deep shade of despair.
“Then do what you like.” D turned and left without another word.
The town would rot away silently, as if this had all been decided two centuries earlier. For the town’s people, tomorrow would never come.
As D hurried down the street, a pale figure rushed at him from the right side. Without even turning to look that way, D simply swept his right hand horizontally. When the figure fell with fresh blood gushing from its chest, D recognized the face. It was the little girl he’d saved from the colossal birds. The fangs jutting from her mouth slowly vanished.
-
Dwalked on. Before he got to the hospital, he was attacked several times, and each time was but a single exchange. Once he’d killed one, there was no one willing to make a second attack. The unearthly aura around D cowed even the dead.
D came to a halt in front of the hospital. The white building was completely destroyed. If the two of them were still inside, even a miracle wouldn’t be enough to save them. Gazing at the rubble for a while, D turned.
A shadowy figure stood there like darkness congealed. Under either arm he carried a body. Dr. Tsurugi and Lori. “They’re both okay, D,” Pluto VIII said. “But I don’t think you’ll be able to get them safely out of here the way things stand now—plus, we’ve got us a fight to finish!” And, with the last word, he let the two bodies fall to the ground.
D sprang instantaneously.
Pluto VIII’s body transformed into a black stain, and two disks flew from him. There was a silvery flash of light. The disks ricocheted away.
Shrinking and shifting, the black stain returned to the form of Pluto VIII. A dark line ran down his forehead. “Thanks,” he said. “Noticed I didn’t have much time left, did you?”
Bright blood spilled from Pluto VIII’s mouth, but it wasn’t the result of any wound D had dealt him. Just as he/Lori had been about to kill Dr. Tsurugi, the jolt of the town landing had dealt a grievous wound to Pluto VIII’s real body wherever he’d left it sleeping.
“There’s one thing I have to tell you . . . ” Pluto VIII groaned as he slowly sank to his knees. “I took her body against her wishes. Tried swaying her with offers of telepathy—but she fought me to the very end.”
“I know,” D said, nodding. “But I’m sure she was always grateful to you for saving her, too.”
It was unclear whether D actually caught the smile chiseled into Pluto VIII’s face at the moment of death.
D went over to where the two bodies lay. They both had a pulse. More surprisingly, some of their cuts had been crudely bandaged. Pluto VIII must’ve done it. He was a strange man.
Screams rose in the distance. Residents were being attacked by former residents, by neighbors who finally had a goal, thanks to this need to turn everyone into vampires.
D put his right hand on the physician’s brow. His eyes opened immediately. As his dim gaze bounced from left to right, there was a glint of will in his eyes. Staring at D, after a moment he asked, “Did you save us?”
“Not me. Him.”
A sorrowful gaze fell on the lifeless form. “I just can’t figure that . . . ” the physician muttered. “What about the town?”
“This town died a long time ago. Now true death has come for it. But I’ll get you both out of here safely. Rest assured.”
“I give up . . . ” Dr. Tsurugi said. “You’re just too much for me. I finally see why she felt the way she did.”
“What are you talking about?” D asked.
The physician said the name of a village, and D’s expression changed. It was as if he’d just been touched by a gentle breeze in midsummer. Several years earlier, he was in that village, locked in a fierce battle to the death with a vampire to protect a brother and sister who lived on a ranch on the outskirts of the small town.
“Are they both well?”
The physician nodded. “Extremely. The little guy helps his sister out like a grown man, and their ranch is even bigger now. I would’ve loved to stay there doing what I could for the rest of my days, but it seemed she had her heart set on somebody else.” Finishing his inspection of Lori, the physician nodded with satisfaction and straightened himself up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the Hunter asked.
“You don’t know how to work the exits o
n your own, do you? Let me help you.”
“You’re wounded.”
“I couldn’t win that girl’s heart. At least let me do something that would’ve made her happy.”
D looked straight into the other man’s eyes and saw the perplexing emotions that swam there. “How long did you spend in that village?” he asked.
“Not long. Six months.”
“The two of them were lucky to have you.”
“Thank you.” The physician’s eyes glittered. A look of pride shone in them.
-
The barrier’s voltage is dropping rapidly!”
As if in response to that last cry, shadowy figures that’d been headed away surged toward the town again.
“How goes inputting the course into the computers?” the mayor shouted.
“It’s finished.”
“Take her up then!”
“We don’t have enough thrust, sir!”
“I don’t care. Just do it!”
“Roger.”
As pale figures cleared the outer wall, pouring down like an avalanche, the town escaped the bounds of earth. It bobbed up into the air as if that were its sole purpose. Still, a few shadowy figures came down the inner wall. The last thing they ever saw was a gorgeous young man who gave off the most unearthly air. Running every last intruder through the heart, D lowered his longsword and turned.
The mayor was standing there. “My journey has only just begun,” he said. “As soon as the dawn comes, the vampires will be destroyed. I’m sure the remaining townsfolk and I will somehow manage to keep the town running.”
“This is a dead town,” D said quietly. “Where will you go? And for what purpose?”
The mayor laughed. It sounded ghastly. A figure leapt at him from behind, its fangs bared. The mayor’s fingertips sank into its heart, and the figure fell at his feet. It was Laura.
Off in the distance, the wind howled. The dawn was still far off.
“There’s a plain a dozen miles from here. You and your friends get off there.” The very sound of the mayor’s voice was dark and distant.
-
Saying not a word, the trio watched the departing town. Where would it go? No trace of the formula had been found on Pluto VIII’s body . . . Where could he have hidden it? Would the mayor ever find it again?
D stroked the muzzle of his cyborg horse. It was one of three the mayor had left with them.
“What’ll we do about the girl?” the physician said, believing Lori to still be asleep, but when he looked over his shoulder he found her awake.
Her eyes gazed across the plain at the blue dawn. Her pale finger moved across the sand. The two men read what she’d written. I’ve heard the sound of the wind and the songs of the birds, it said. So, that was the perspective the girl had after seeing life and death up close? As her long hair fluttered in the morning breeze, Lori’s shadow was etched distinctly on the ground.
“A mile and a quarter ahead of us is a town. The two of you should go there together.” Saying that, D got on his steed.
“Where will you go?”
Giving no reply, D advanced on his horse. Mount and rider quickly dwindled as they headed off, bound for the mountain ridges that grew bluer by the minute.
-
POSTSCRIPT
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This is my first new postscript for the English editions of my books.
I’d like to thank my readers in America and elsewhere for supporting D for so long. Due, no doubt, to the two animated features, sales of the novels have been good, and the author is overjoyed. I can’t sleep with my feet toward the anime directors. (According to Japanese custom, sleeping with your feet facing someone you are indebted to means you aren’t grateful to them. Well, since I don’t know where either of them lives, I may actually have my feet pointed toward them . . . )
I’ve loved horror and sci-fi since I was a kid, and I never missed one of these kinds of films when they were showing in my hometown (which was a desolate port town like Lovecraft’s Innsmouth.) Even when I had a fever of about a hundred and four, I acted perfectly fine in front of my parents, and, once I was outside, I staggered over to the movie theater. (The film was The Brides of Dracula.) Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein was showing on the same bill with a rather erotic French film, and the woman at the ticket booth said to me, “For a kid, you’ve come to see a pretty lewd movie.” But I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about and went right on in. Unfortunately, the erotic film proved more interesting. (Laughs.)
As I was born in 1949, what left the strongest impression on me were the Hammer horror films from England. In particular, I’ll never forget the impact Horror of Dracula had on me when I saw it. Gripped by the fearsomeness of Count Dracula as portrayed by Christopher Lee, every night I slept with a cross fashioned from a pair of chopsticks by my pillow.
Mr. Lee and Peter Cushing, who played the part of Van Helsing, became my favorite stars. Though I never did get a chance to meet Mr. Cushing, about ten years ago I met Mr. Lee and got his autograph when he came to Japan for the Tokyo Fantastic Film Festival. Wow, was he huge! (I’m not quite five foot seven.)
But the first time I ever saw Dracula and Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, mad doctors, and the rest was in a horror/comedy production by Universal called Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Made in 1948, the film was screened in Japan in 1956.
All of the monsters who were to decide my future were in this one film. How lucky could you get? I think I was some-how fated to write about them. And the way I completely missed Horror of Dracula the first time it showed in my home-town but caught it when it came back for another showing a few years later was nothing short of miraculous. Once again, it was destiny.
This is how the hero known as Vampire Hunter D came to be. I was thirty-three when I gave life to him, and I continue writing about his adventures twenty-two years later. Not only in novels now, he’s spread to animation and games, and plans for his Hollywood debut and an American comic version are progressing nicely. However, more than anything, it pleases me that the novels have found acceptance and an audience with you.
I’m quite proud of Tale of the Dead Town and the action I penned as D does battle with the Nobility against the wondrous backdrop of a floating city. Please sit back and enjoy it, just as you’d watch a scary, fun, and thrilling horror/action movie.
Until we meet again. From under distant Japanese skies, to all my readers abroad.
-
Hideyuki Kikuchi
October 14, 2005,
watching Horror of Dracula
THE GIRL THE SLEEP-BRINGER LOVED
CHAPTER 1
-
I
-
The moon was out.
No matter how dangerous night on the Frontier had become, the clarity of the night itself never changed. Perhaps supernatural beasts and fiends alone had pleasant dreams . . .
But there was someone else here who might have them, too. Here, in the middle of a dense forest, he slept.
As if to prove that night on the Frontier was never silent, voices beyond numbering sang from the tops of the demon’s scruff oaks or from the dense greenery of a thicket of sweet mario bushes.
Though the sleeper’s dreams might be peaceful, the forest at night was home to hunger and evil. Spraying poison to seal their opponent’s eyes, dungeon beetles were known to set upon their prey with sharp teeth no bigger than grains of sand. A swarm of them could take a fifteen-foot-long armored dragon and strip it to the bone in less than two minutes. Sometimes the black earth swelled up, and a mass of absorption worms burst out, crawling in all directions. Over a foot and a half long, the massive worms broke down soil with powerful molecular vibrations and absorbed it through the million mouths that graced the nucleus of each of their cells. Usually they’d latch onto a traveler’s ankle first and melt the foot right off before pouncing on more vital locations like the head or the heart. How could anything escape them when their very
touch ate through skin and bone alike?
Colors occurred in the darkness as well. Perhaps catching some odd little noise in the sound of the wind, the snowy white petals that opened gorgeously in the moonlight trembled ever so slightly as the flower sprayed out a pale purple mist, and, as the cloud drifted down to earth, tiny white figures floated down with it. Each of them carried a minute spear, and only those who’d made it through the forest alive knew that they were evil little sprites from within the flower, with poison sap made from petals.
And of all the blood-hued eyes glittering off in the darkness a little way off, and further back, and even deeper still—nothing—was merely an innocent onlooker.
While everyone who went out on the Frontier might not know it, those who actually lived there realized the forests weren’t a wise place to choose for a night of restful sleep. They were aware that the plaintive birdsong was actually the voice of a demon bird that muddled the senses, and that the gentle fog was in fact mist devils trying to sneak into their victims’ bodies. If they absolutely had to sleep in the forest, people would keep a bow with an incendiary-tipped arrow in one hand, and shut their eyes only after zipping their asbestos sleeping bag up over their head. Sprite spears and the teeth of nocturnal insect predators couldn’t penetrate a half-inch thickness of that cloth, and, if a traveler drank an antidote derived from the juice of hell berries, they didn’t have to worry about demonic fogs, either. Their head, however, would be aching the next morning. If, by some chance, the attacks should persist, then the bow and arrow came into play.
However, the traveler now surrounded by all these weird creatures seemed completely ignorant of the threats the woods held. Lying on a bed of grass, the moonlight shone down on him like a spotlight. While his face couldn’t be seen for the black, wide-brimmed traveler’s hat that covered it, the deep blue pendant that hung at his chest, the black long coat, the high leather boots with their silver spurs, and, more than anything, the elegant longsword leaning against his shoulder left no room for muddled conjecture or doubt. All those things were meant to adorn someone beautiful.
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