Gossitch floored the accelerator, the rear wheels slipping under him for a second and then he had it and the car shot forward. The blue and white coffee cup tumbled from the dash. He had both hands on the wheel, one at ten and one at two.
Santa Anna ratcheted back the pump on his Ithaca, forgetting he had a live round chambered. The shell flipped end over end from the underside ejector port, bouncing off the dashboard and disappearing among the floor mats.
The rear door to the RV opened before the front door closed behind the kinky-haired woman.
“Hey nigga, what the fu—”
Bowie shouldered his way to the front of the line, yanking a toothless man out of his way, the blanket falling away from his frame, the 9mm Commando SMG on its sling coming out and up, tracking on the door as he reached out and up and pulled himself into the RV behind Boone.
The kinky-headed woman yelped and ran, the Pontiac almost swiping her as it screeched to a halt besides the RV, its front end crashing into the RV’s front door, slamming it shut violently. The Pontiac was pressed against the side of the larger vehicle, cutting off exit through the front door.
As Boone leveled the business end of the big Smith & Wesson, Bowie behind him, eight pairs of eyes inside the RV looked around in various states of shock, disbelief, and confusion. Two were obviously locals, worn and haggard volunteers hooked up to IVs, red flowing out of their veins into collection bags. The other six had come with the trailer and all of these but one wore smocks like nurses in a hospital. As Bowie passed Boone, stepping further into the trailer, a couple of them took steps back, startled at the site of the homeless man and the small M-16-looking weapon he brandished. Another hissed at him, jaws opening to reveal ivory fangs and a mouthful of ugly promises.
The tall vamp in the hat and gloves stood near the front of the RV, watching the scene unfold.
The tinted windows were curtained and the only light came from the florescent bulbs running along the ceiling.
“Down! All of you down! Down!” Bowie yelled at them, waving the stubby barrel of the Colt menacingly. “Down!”
The two volunteers rolled off their gurneys on either side of the aisle and cowered on the floor, but not one of the six others made a move to follow suit.
“We got silver bullets in these bitches!” Bowie shouted and for good measure fired a six round burst through the ceiling of the RV. The shell casings made a little jingle as they littered the floor. One of the two civilians shrieked in fear.
The lights overhead flickered but stayed on.
All but two of the original eight in the trailer had gone flat and lay there, looking for direction from the duo that remained on their feet.
The K-Car screeched to a halt outside, the line of volunteers long scattered and gone.
“What’s with you motherfuckers?” Boone barked at the two standing. “Didn’t the man just tell you to get-the-fuck-down?”
“Maybe they don’t believe we got something special for them.” Bowie patted the barrel of his SMG.
“You two!” Boone indicated the civilians on the floor. “Go. Move.”
They scampered past the two armed men and out of the RV.
“Now…” Boone loosed the stake he wore at his side on its lanyard from his shoulder and held it up for all to see.
“I said get down motherfuckers!” Bowie roared again but neither of the two left standing made a move to comply.
“Punk-ass motherfuckers—” Boone’s face was bright red and he was cursing gibberish and spittle as he lost control, crossing the space between himself and the closest of the standing vampires, grabbing it by its cold, clammy neck. He pulled it close to him and pressed the tip of the wooden stake to its cheek, one eye on the tall vampire in the front of the RV the entire time. “You got a fuckin’ problem with your fuckin’ hearin’ you bloodsucker whore son a bitch—”
The tall vampire stood where it was, watching and waiting. Bowie shifted the barrel of his Colt towards it and sited down the barrel on the thing.
“Give me a reason,” he whispered.
Boone dragged the tall thing’s compatriot down the aisle bodily, the creature hissing at him but making no move to resist. He slammed it from side to side against gurneys. Medical supplies overturned, showering to the floor. Charts and papers fell and fluttered off the walls. The thing he manhandled showed its fangs, but it was terrorized and not looking for a fight.
“Boone!” called Gossitch. The crew chief and Santa Anna were in the trailer behind Bowie. Hamilton and Jay were poking their heads and the barrels of their Colts through the door, watching what was going on. Madison wouldn’t have left the van and the van wouldn’t have moved yet.
Boone rammed the vampire against a blacked-out, curtained window. The glass gave and the thing screamed as the muscular man thrust it halfway out of the trailer. Even with an overcast sky the pale sunlight was poison to its being. The vampire fought against him, grasping at the window frame, trying to pull itself back into the trailer. Boone held it at arms length a few moments longer, the thing screeching in agony and smoking.
“Boone!”
He yanked it inside and the thing collapsed to the floor, smoldering and whimpering. It started to crawl away from him.
“When the man says get the fuck down,” Boone roared at the four figures already prone. “You get the fuck down!”
“Give me the word, Boone.” Bowie had the tall vampire locked in his rear field site. Gossitch and the other men in their crew were transferring boxes of cash and insulated cases of blood to the cars outside on the street.
“Kreshnik…” the wounded thing on the floor was calling plaintively to the sole standing vampire.
Boone turned his attention to the tall vampire.
“What about you, huh?” Boone took a few steps forward. Was it his imagination or did it get darker the closer he came to the thing? He held the stake up. “Smell it, bitch? You smell the silver?”
The vampire reached up slowly with one gloved hand. Bowie aimed past Boone’s shoulder, ready to cut the thing in half with a burst of silver-dipped lead. It removed the boonie hat and they could see its face. It was the face of a relatively young man, but a face grey and colorless, cold and without emotion.
The vampire leaned forward at the neck, its movement barely perceptible, and it inhaled, its equine nose twitching ever so slightly.
“Smell it, don’t ya’ bitch?”
“Boone, let’s go.” Gossitch was calling from somewhere, but Boone was caught up in the moment. It was as though there was no one in this space but himself and the thing that stood before him, watching him, unafraid.
“Come on…” Boone mouthed the words, wishing the thing would attack so he’d have an excuse to stake it. But it stood there, immovable, and its eyes met his. They looked at him and into him, through him, beyond him, and Boone shuddered.
“Motherfuck—” he shook his head, breaking the spell, and started forward, intent on skewering the fucker. Bowie’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Boone, man the fuck up! We got what we came for. Let’s jet.”
Bowie shook Boone with the hand clasped on his shoulder. Bowie figured the kid’s blood pressure was through the roof because Boone’s face had turned a shade of crimson he’d never seen outside of a crayon box.
“We out, Boone.”
Santa Anna was in the trailer with them, the muzzle of his Ithaca on the four on the floor. “This one ain’t a vamp.”
“Slave,” stated Bowie, pushing Boone past him, the barrel of his Colt SMG locked on the tall vampire who stood in the front of the RV.
“Boone…”
Boone stopped and turned. The thing with the hat had whispered his name.
“You got it.” As he said it his chest swelled again. He wanted to tear past Bowie and into the freak fuck.
“Kreshnik, right?”
The thing snarled and then said something in a language Boone didn’t understand. Its voice was thick and guttural wi
th a hint of a sibilant lisp.
“This is America, asshole.” Boone locked eyes with it again. “Speak American.”
Tires screeched outside.
Boone purposefully broke their gaze this time and leaned down, grabbing one of the human beings who huddled on the floor by her hair. She had been beautiful once, but now she was worn and blanched, a willing slave to the undead. She hissed at him but posed no danger.
“This one yours?” he called back to the tall vampire as he scratched the woman’s face with the tip of his stake. She screamed as though he had impaled her and shook uncontrollably, a trickle of blood dripping down her cheek. Boone let her fall back to the floor as the other three on the floor shuddered and cried out in terror.
As everyone watched, Boone licked the woman’s blood from the stake. He stuck his tongue out like he had tasted feces and spit on the floor. “And you fuckers suck that shit out of tampons, right?”
“Gentlemen, let’s put a little light to this endeavor—” Gossitch had stepped up into the trailer, replacing Santa Anna. He shouldered his Colt SMG and fired three round bursts through the blackened windows, the glass shattering, weak sunlight filtering in.
The tall vampire continued to stand where it was as the wounded vampire and the three others screeched and sought cover, crawling under overturned gurneys, yanking mattresses and lab coats over themselves, one worming its way into some floor-level cabinets. The cut woman cried hysterically, grasping her face.
Bowie was out of the RV and Gossitch pulled on Boone.
“Let’s go, kid.”
Boone straight armed the .44 and fired one shot. The tall vampire didn’t flinch as the bullet zipped past its head and blew out the windshield behind it in a hail of glass shards.
Gossitch grabbed Boone by his arm and pulled him out of the trailer, the horrendous sobs of the burned vampire emanating from the cabinets where it had dragged itself.
Boone hopped into the back of the K-Car. Gossitch was in the passenger seat as Santa Anna floored the accelerator.
“We got it all?” Boone asked the men.
“The product, the money,” confirmed Santa Anna.
“Got these for you, Goose.” Gossitch, turned in the passenger seat, took the pack of Marlboros from Boone without taking his eyes off the street behind them.
“We clear?” Santa Anna glanced in the rear view.
“We clear,” said Gossitch.
7.
5:19 A.M.
They drove in silence for several blocks and then Santa Anna turned the car into an alley that let out into a rubble-strewn lot. The Pontiac was there already and Jay and Hamilton were transferring cases to the van.
“Pop the trunk,” Gossitch told Santa Anna as the Reliant pulled to a halt next to the van. Gossitch got out of the K-Car with his SMG and walked back to the alley. Boone and Santa Anna went to work unloading the trunk of their car into the van.
Gossitch followed the passage and stood in the rain near to where it let out into the street, keeping an eye on the way they’d come. Vampires didn’t move about freely in the daytime, but that wouldn’t stop them from sending their slaves…
As he watched the road, Gossitch reached into his back pocket and took out his Marlboros. He lit one up. This neighborhood was mostly deserted and anyone who could wouldn’t talk to the cops. Around here, the police weren’t considered the good guys. Around here vampires and other things preyed on the poor and the weak, and when people complained no one listened to them. The ones who listened didn’t believe them.
Gossitch knew better. He knew the stories, the reality. He knew that where there was myth there was often some kind of truth. He knew that myth could serve as the perfect cover, an alibi. He knew that when a man or woman survived an encounter with a beast of legend they couldn’t always rationally describe what had happened to them, what they had seen.
The people here…society had dismissed them as pariahs and leeches, abandoning them. Who really cared about them? Gossitch knew why the vamps liked to prey on these men and women. Who was going to notice if a few more homeless or hookers went missing? They disappeared all the time and it rarely made the papers.
Gossitch had to give the vamps credit. They’d gotten more sophisticated in the last few years. They were getting better at what they did. This whole blood collection scam for instance. What an idea. Why kill humans or turn them to slaves when you could keep them willingly coming back, time after time, none the wiser? The vamps had plenty of cash on hand to pay volunteers, and in a neighborhood like this there was never a shortage of volunteers. Gossitch exhaled a plume of smoke and thought he had to hand it to the vamps, there was a diabolical genius to their idea.
A city bus passed a block down.
He knew the vamps had their own problems. Civil war had thinned their ranks. The dissension that separated clans was what allowed Gossitch and his crew to survive the way they did. Play one side against another. Exploit them. Make a good living from it, too. And thus far, knock on wood, they’d all been able to walk away.
He could hear the men talking as they worked, blowing off steam. A lot of tension and anxiety around a job, but so far Gossitch’s track record spoke for itself. He had hand selected these men and his choices had been solid.
“Goose, how’s it look?” Hamilton joined him in the alley. He was a Guatemalan, his hair spiked up with gel.
“Quiet morning.”
“We good.” Hamilton nodded his head over his shoulder back to the vehicles and other men.
“Let’s roll, Ham.” Gossitch tossed his cigarette butt to the ground and followed Hamilton back to the van. Madison was behind the wheel. Hamilton slid across the bench seat next to him. Bowie, Boone, Santa Anna, and Jay were in back with the merchandise.
They were all safe, reflected Gossitch. His boys had all made it in one piece. He took great satisfaction in this fact.
He slammed the passenger side door closed and Madison put it in drive, pulling back down the alley and out onto the street, the stolen K-car and Pontiac abandoned in the lot.
Gossitch thought about something Santa Anna had said to him back in the Reliant, something about Boone. Gossitch had meant what he’d said about wanting Boone by his side if things went to hell. It had happened once or twice on a job, and the only reason any of them had survived was because the kid had been there. Boone was a valuable man to have on the crew, Gossitch knew, but his value stemmed in part from his role as a maverick, as something almost uncontrollable.
That shot at the vampire in the RV, for example. Had the kid been meaning to cap the tall thing? Probably. Boone was such a bad shot.
Gossitch wondered if it was all the testosterone Boone put in his system to pump his muscles up. Maybe it was the cocaine or whatever other recreational drugs the kid snorted and smoked when he wasn’t on a job. Gossitch would never work with a man whose head wasn’t on straight, but he ascribed to the belief that after a job was over a man’s free time was a man’s free time.
When it came to vampires or werewolves or any one of another dozen varieties of nasties that inhabited the Big Apple, Boone was ready to throw down on the get-go. And that was a valuable quality in and of itself.
The crew chief didn’t think the kid had any fear. None. It would have been a dangerous thing if the kid wasn’t smart. But Gossitch knew, aside from having a set on him like a pair of basketballs, Boone was shrewd enough, even calculating.
The kid had rammed the vampire through the glass and hung it out there to burn. That had messed up all the other vamps with the exception of the tall one. Gossitch made a mental note to ask Raheem about that.
Truth was, Gossitch admitted it to himself, the kid’s action had jarred him some too. There was an unknown quantity with Boone, something of a sadistic streak. The kid could have just as easily tossed the vamp out onto the sidewalk to fry. Maybe he would have if Gossitch hadn’t been there.
And that thing with the girl…there was only one fate left her now.
They robbed monsters. That’s how they made their living. Gossitch did it for the money, not the thrill. Gossitch suspected the kid did it for the thrill. The crew chief knew Boone nurtured a special hatred for their non-human marks. It was the way some white people Gossitch knew felt about blacks and Hispanics. The kid hated monsters, all monsters, even the ones they worked with.
Yeah, thought Gossitch, maybe it was all that testosterone in the kid’s system. Or maybe it was just Boone’s warped brain chemistry.
8.
6:03 A.M.
Somewhere off in the dark, water dripped.
After three hundred and twenty six years of existence, the dark Lord Rainford had grown fatigued in body and mind.
This was nothing new.
He had grown dispirited and disillusioned centuries ago. His end, he knew, would come in the next decades, and he felt none of the anticipation or elation that others he shared this earth with did for the coming of a new millennium. He had seen the passage of centuries and realized that time, in the sense of seconds and minutes and hours, of days and weeks and months and years, was an arbitrary affair, an imposition of order upon a seemingly haphazard universe.
Rainford might have felt pity for the humans, their thoughts centered on the coming millennium, if he wasn’t contemptuous of them. The millennium. Just another capricious number. The humans. They had hunted Rainford’s kind down through the centuries, through the millennia.
Drip…drip…drip…
Now he felt annoyance at his own kind, those who had beckoned him rise from his rest. There was weak daylight outside the warehouse’s blackened and barred windows, and centuries had acclimated Rainford to dormancy in the day. As one who had spent hundreds of years hiding from the burning white orb, Rainford had developed what he considered a healthy respect for solar radiation. Even when he was safe and secure in his own redoubt, he knew when the sun shone upon his portion of the earth.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 3