The first cry was off in the distance, but almost instantly one sounded close. Kvelda’s head jerked up so quickly she banged her skull on Day’s jaw.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t . . . know.”
Normally screams would abate. Instead the field seemed to reverberate with cruel echoes and then yet more cries. In the moonlight Day saw several emaciated black shadows flit across the sky.
There was an explosion of dust nearby them suddenly, urging Day and Kvelda to their feet. For a moment all sense of caution fled and Day stared unblinkingly as the vampire stood from his landing crouch and snared the man nearest him in a hard embrace. Bones cracked in the captured man’s forearm as the vampire used all his unnatural force to wrestle the victim into a ready pose. Then, his captive thus bundled in the vampire’s arms, the black-clad figure crouched and leapt, flying into the sky and vanishing again.
Day turned slowly, stunned despite so many recent shocks. Kvelda grabbed his arm, her breathless comments in his ear making no sense. Whether by moonlight or by dint of his heightened senses, Day could see how all around them across the plateau figures were standing and reacting to the chaos. There was no spot untouched. There was no-one huddling into their precious sanctuary and trying to sleep. The screams redoubled like they were in an abattoir and Day saw clearly how the night was alive with intruders.
Scarcely three seconds had passed since the last attack when another vampire, her skeletal hips and shockingly thin waist signposting her sex the way nothing else could, landed a short distance away and dropped an older man to the ground with one chop of her wedge-like hand. In an instant the she-vampire had the victim scooped up and was bounding away, taking to the sky again with her prey three steps later.
Day turned to say something to Kvelda – something he instantly forgot – and saw one vampire land thirty paces in the opposite direction and then another some yards further back. Day’s response was instantaneous. He grabbed the girl by the hand and slung the rifles over his shoulder and started running.
“Where are we going to go?” Kvelda yelled over the surf-like roar all around.
For all the good it would do them, Day drew a pistol as they ran, swerving around panic-stricken spectators. Off to the right, a vampire battered one man to the ground and then took the victim’s mate with her into the air. How they propelled themselves Day couldn’t tell.
“Carlos,” was all Day said.
“What good is that?” Kvelda all-but shrieked.
Day shrugged, unable to find the words to justify it nor appease her. He merely tugged her along. With his elbow he floored an obese, terrified-looking man who tried to clutch at them for help, and then they ran on.
The whole field was crawling with them. Like giant insects hop-scotching across a Petri dish, the vampires sailed out of the air as silent as death made flesh and bone. They came from all directions, no apparent method to their madness. All Day knew was that his worst fears were proven right. Victim by victim, the keepers were making a clean start.
Two hundred yards from Carlos’s hidey-hole a girl aged about twelve was spirited away into the air. Day and Kvelda kept running and no more than fifty yards further on, Day was convinced the very same vampire landed again. A smear of black-seeming redness marked the creature’s angular face, sharp teeth making a mockery of such otherwise humane lips.
Day lifted the handgun and fired. The vampire was punched staggering backwards by the first bullet and almost upended by the second. It gave a plaintive yelp and spiralled back into the air though Day knew it would soon realise the ordinary bullets hadn’t done any real harm. With a sharp tug he changed tack, Kvelda’s teeth clacking together as he roughly dragged her with him. Out of the sky a woman fell, her smock torn through the back – one of the killers’ mistakes, no doubt. And after she fell she would never rise again. Day barely reacted, vaulting the shattered body and forcing Kvelda to follow.
“Day!”
“Keep moving,” he hissed.
They closed in on Carlos’s safety house. In the dark it wasn’t exactly easy to find, yet Day led them almost unerringly to the spot. Chest heaving, he called the half-Mexican’s name three times before the desert-camouflaged flap lifted.
“What are you doing? Trying to get me killed?” Carlos swore.
Day fought for the right words before saying bluntly, “All hell’s breaking loose.”
“No need to tell me, kid,” Carlos said.
He pulled the blanket across the hole again and disappeared from view.
“Day. . . .” Kvelda nervously warned.
Again Day pulled his arm free. He wasn’t to be deterred. He called Carlos’s name several more times. A hundred yards away, a vampire landed on the back of a running woman and drove her into the ground. In moments they were gone together. The field was depopulating at an alarming rate.
Day’s patience evaporated. Though he didn’t feel specially ordained for the part, he trod forward and tore the covering away from Carlos’s shelter. His erstwhile friend was out of the hole in a heartbeat, a knife with a knuckle-guard in his hand. On his face was an expression of pure murder.
Before Carlos could say or do anything, Day spoke again. “Do you think they are just going to let you sit here with your head in the sand? Carlos, wake up. The charade’s over. You’ve been running, but it’s over.”
“You touch my shelter again and I kill you,” Carlos spat.
“Carlos,” Day said, “come with us. We’ve got to get out of here or we’re all dead.”
“You might be,” Carlos shrugged, already trying to drag his disguised entrance back into position.
A man ran screaming past them, virtually blind to his surroundings. When he had passed, Day said, “They’re not going to leave anyone.”
“I could do with the quiet,” Carlos said.
“If the field’s empty there’ll be no food, Carlos. You’ll starve.”
“They’re only clearing the field to start over again,” Carlos answered. “I can hold out until the population swells.”
He lifted his head, a noble and, Day realised, completely unconvinced expression on his face. Carlos’s dark features were slick with tears and his jaw was tight-clenched to save himself spluttering. The point of the evil-looking knife he held wavered as Day took several more steps toward him.
“I killed a vamp already. I can do it again. I can get us over the fence.”
“To what?” Carlos groaned. “Another field?”
“Freedom,” Day said. “Freedom or death.”
Carlos shook his head wordlessly for a few moments and finally slumped forward, resting his forehead on Day’s shoulder, his own chest and shoulders twitching as he came to grips with the demise of his masquerade. The fantasy of eternal survival was ruined forever. Day helplessly kissed the top of his head while screams tore the air around them.
At length, Carlos broke away again as if suddenly angry once more. He started pulling apart his subterranean shelter on his own. After a few seconds it became obvious he was gathering supplies. Watching him, Day peeled one of the M-16s off his shoulder. When Carlos stepped up to him again, Day passed the weapon over.
“These are like the ghouls have,” Carlos said in a hoarse voice.
“Military weapons,” Kvelda said, no more than a ghost ten strides away in the dark.
Carlos grunted and pulled a hide bundle over his shoulder.
“We travel light,” Day said.
“Just the essentials,” Carlos said.
“Do you have something that can pass for rope?”
Carlos studied Day a moment, but he was more thoughtful than emotional. He gave a curt nod and went back into the cleft. While the backdrop erupted in fresh screams close by and Day and Kvelda flinched, Day bringing his rifle to bear, Carlos stepped up again rapidly sorting through tangled reams of plastic cable slightly thicker than twine.
“Good,” Day said.
Freed of some of his awkwa
rd burden, Day was able to carry the remaining rifle double-handed, confident that Kvelda was sticking close by. Gesturing with the barrel, he started moving them east to the closest boundary.
Their progress was marred by the panic of the remaining survivors. As the deadly flyers continued to vault out of the night, capturing if not killing their quarry as they appeared, the remaining internees railed against their predicament in a variety of ways. When three men and a woman took more than a casual interest in the well-equipped trio moving in their purposeful manner for the eastern boundary, Carlos emptied half a magazine into their ranks, killing the lead man and the woman and driving the others off wounded.
“You’re good with that thing,” Day said.
“First time I killed something other’n a rabbit with one,” Carlos answered.
In the final stretch between the cattle and the wall there was no real option but to go hell for leather and hope the ghouls were either too busy or too confident to stop them. Although not much could be seen, Day was sure the ghouls were up there in their hundreds, massed to witness and enjoy the handiwork of their masters against the hated humanity they themselves had once been. According to farm folklore about such things, the ghouls were derived from human servants to the vampires in the days before the Rising, with vampiric magic transforming and at the same time cursing the awful survivors to a kind of un-life. Day had often wondered if the process was ongoing and if more than the occasional airlifted human met his or her end by getting ‘ghouled’ instead of fed upon. The handgun at his side reassured him the moment he started thinking such thoughts.
Sixty yards out Day registered swift movement on their right flank and heard a faint but insistent sound, unmistakably a gunshot. Staring quick at the sound, he saw two men bounding across the hard-packed dirt and odd-weeded ground towards them.
“Friends?” Carlos asked.
Day shook his head and tilted the muzzle of his gun up until it was level.
“Steady there!” the lead man called.
Day couldn’t say why he didn’t instantly fire on Mikhail and the scampering Asian man behind him. Carlos had mercilessly kept them safe from anyone trying to rush them for their weapons, but now as Day’s own rifle came up, Mikhail, a ghoul pistol in one hand, raised it and his other hand to show he meant no harm, all the while hurrying forward.
“Wait, damn it. Give us a damned chance,” Mikhail said again.
“What is it?” Carlos barked.
“I know him,” Day said softly.
Carlos was closer than the newcomers. He pitched his voice accordingly.
“How’s that?”
“Tried to kill me,” Day said.
“Hey, man –” the Asian guy began, but Mikhail cut him off.
“You don’t need to worry. I’m not here to make problems.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Day said.
“We should all be worried.” Mikhail half-gestured.
Day didn’t react for a moment, but the grudging nod was inevitable, almost instinctual.
“Maybe,” he said, feeling suddenly like Carlos’s understudy.
“There’s safety in numbers. You look like you’ve got a plan,” Mikhail said.
“You think so?” Carlos asked.
Day patted his rifle while Mikhail motioned towards the weapons.
“Yeah I think so,” Mikhail said.
“We’re going over the wall,” Day blurted suddenly.
“Yeah?” the Asian man said.
“How’ll you do it?” Mikhail asked.
“I’ve got a rope, grapples.”
They stood there for a moment. Day glanced slightly at Kvelda and, knowing what he was doing, gave her a wry, false but reassuring smile. Mikhail glanced at his companion and shrugged, turning back to Day and starting to tuck the pistol into the waistband of his tattered, hide-reinforced jeans.
“His name’s Musashi,” Mikhail said, indicating the man with a head gesture.
Day nodded towards Mikhail’s companion. “Musashi,” he repeated, lifted the rifle again and opened fire.
Mikhail twitched, and then he and his partner flew backward, the automatic fire devastating and final. Whatever their prior enmity, close to thirty rounds shared between the two men had settled it. Day, almost consciously uncertain of his own decision, lowered the smoking weapon and looked to Carlos for confirmation.
The other man only shrugged and took the gun from Mikhail’s belt, checking the chamber and the clip like an expert.
“Time’s running out,” he said.
Day turned even more slowly towards Kvelda, dreading the expression he half-expected to find clear as daylight and foul as murder on her face. But she stood staring not at him, but up at the parapet wall a short distance away. As Day started opening his mouth to speak, Kvelda broke into a run, leading the way toward their objective.
Day swung back his rifle and followed. He all but hit the wall as he ran for it. Carlos was close behind. The moment they had all arrived, Carlos crouched and started adjusting the rifle Day had given him. Whatever previous weakness he might’ve suffered now passed seemingly as swift as a summer storm. Day glanced at him and Carlos held out a hand.
“Tell me you’ve got more ammo for these things. I don’t want to go up there with only half a clip.”
Day handed one of the remaining cartridges from the first of two green hip-bags taken from Mother Sky’s plane. Carlos grunted in acknowledgement and quickly replaced and cocked the rifle before turning and guarding the path behind them.
“All up to you now, Day,” he said.
Day reloaded his own weapon. Then he shucked the rifle and looked tensely at Kvelda. In Carlos’s company Day felt suddenly bereft of the right words to share with her before they parted, perhaps never to meet again. He gave her hand a single squeeze and then he slipped the plastic bands around his wrists, the steel hooks in his palms.
Carlos duck-walked close and looped one end of the plastic cord around Day’s neck. He threw the rest of the loose-bunched line on the ground. Day glanced down once to make sure he wasn’t further entangling himself and then he kicked off his boots.
“Make sure you bring them,” Day said.
Carlos snorted through one nostril and, looking to Kvelda, raised an eyebrow. Day didn’t pause to watch the young woman acquiesce. He began moving instead. Like a monkey with claws, only a few seconds later he was halfway up the barricade. It seemed to get easier every time.
The ghoul stuck its head over the lip once it heard Day make contact with the metal outcrop. Day had the sense the thing was lurking just a moment before the head appeared. It wasn’t much effort to yank himself upward, sinking the hook through the corpse-like thing’s unprotected eye. Once the ghoul was snared, Day pulled down and, a moment later, he jerked the sorry creature over the edge of the studded metal battlement. Its match-thin carcass crashed into the ground instants later, but Day was without pause. He practically swam over the edge of the barricade trailing his plastic bonds.
There were two more ghouls, each just as surprised to see Day as they were to see their companion plucked out of the air by seemingly invisible fingers. Day still had the steel hooks between his fingers, the assault rifle across his back. He swung left and right, staving in the cheekbone of one ghoul and hooking the other in the throat and pulling it towards its mate. As they crunched together, leather boots squeaking and firearms clacking in the darkness, Day let the hook in his right hand hang free.
He quickly drew one of the silver-coated knives dwelling at the base of his broad back. The ghoul with the collapsed face made a choking noise, trying to tug a 9mm pistol from its belt. Day quickly stabbed three times into its chest. The blade made a sizzling sound in the ensorcelled flesh. Using main strength alone, Day turned and grabbed the other ghoul by neck and sleeve. Then he threw it over the edge, whereupon it plummeted down to silence before raising any alarm.
The remaining creature, chest dripping black ichor from wounds seeming to
widen by the minute, collapsed to its knees and weakly tried to pull its gun. As the creature raised the weapon, Day caught its wrist and, though the pistol went off, a moment later Day had sheared the thing’s head clean off. He let the lifeless corpse drop backwards, no more substance to it than a sack of bones. After casting about for further threats and finding nothing, Day stowed the hooks and retrieved one of the ghouls’ automatic rifles.
When things had been silent for more than a few seconds, Carlos called from below. Day whistled back and shook the plastic cable, preparing himself to act as a counterweight while the others climbed up. Pitching himself in all endurance against the effort, a short time later he was relieved to see Kvelda mount over the awkward overhanging bulwark.
“Grab a rifle and watch the corridors,” Day said by way of greeting.
Kvelda nodded without speaking and slipped down, crouching the whole time, into the low space between the parapet walls of the observation track. In moments she had freed another of the military weapons and was lifting it to guard the path to Day’s left.
“Be quick, Day,” she said.
Almost as soon as the words left Kvelda’s mouth, Day felt the line go tight once more. With much greater difficulty for both Day and Carlos, the other man started up.
It seemed to take forever; and the whole while Day was convinced more ghouls or vampires were about to burst out of the shadows and mow them down while they were helplessly caught. Yet it didn’t happen. That guns sounded somewhere else in the distance didn’t relieve him much, though he hoped it would cover their own gunfire and that of the recently slain ghouls. When Carlos finally scrabbled and clawed his way over the jutting barricade, Day dropped onto his haunches, back soaking with sweat. Carlos slithered the rest of the distance and dropped down into relative obscurity equally worn-out.
“That was a hell of a climb,” he muttered.
Day pondered his best response in between jagged breaths and then the moment was lost to him as Carlos nodded at the matte black of the latest claimed weapon.
Endless Night Page 24