Scuffling.
Grunting.
The sound of metal clanging on rock.
And a laugher. Cruel and hard and cold.
More of the raspy voice, talking in a foreign language Ben could not understand. It was like French without warmth and passion. There was no passion in this man's voice, only cruelty.
Closer Ben approached, hunched now, holding his breath. He moved along a wall, bolo gripped tight in his hand.
Whelping sounded ahead, in a room where the source of the glowing had come from.
Crying and begging from someone else, someone not Helwing.
Answered by that horrid croaking.
And there came a heart-stopping crack, of bone or twig snapping followed by muffled, gurgled screams and squeals.
Ben's eyes grew wide. Is that Renfield in there? he thought. Is he hurt? Who else is in there with them? Who could overpower two men so easily?
Reaching the opening, Ben peered inside.
First his eyes reached the glowing ambers of the torches lit inside.
He saw Helwing, laying on the floor, seemingly unconscious, a gash cut across his forehead.
And then his eye traced the backwall and the rats swarming the edges of the stone. Up and up Ben's eyes followed until he saw him—it, whatever this thing was, draped in a ragged flowing cloak, bald, completely hairless, it held Renfield in one bony fingered hand and with the other he—it was cutting with its talon fingernails and licking hungerly at the shavings of his friend's flesh.
Renfield looked limp, his boots dangling an inch from the ground.
Ben gazed down at the blood pooling at his friend's feet.
And the rats that horded around it and drank eagerly.
"No!"
Without thought, Ben charged into the chamber, bolo now poised, readied to strike.
The man-like thing that held Renfield gave a wicked grin. In a fluid seemingly effortless motion, he lashed out with that elongated bony hand and clawed at Ben's abdomen.
Ben sucked in his gut, dodging those freakish fingers, halting and falling backwards into the dust and rock and stone.
The cloaked thing glared down at him, its red eyes a horror of rage, lust, and venom. It opened its maw, revealing a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth and two large front teeth that looked as if it belonged to some undiscovered sea creature. Drool glistened on each of the two elongated fangs as if Ben were nothing more than some piece of meat roasting on a pit. The fact that all this man's nightmare features fit within the confines of a seemingly otherwise human face made his appearance all the more unnerving and utterly insane. Men did not look like this—this mutant, men could be beastly in action and deed, on the inside, but this man was more, he was as unholy outward as he was inward. Not right.
Shaking his head, Ben tore his gaze away. Terrified he may lose his mind if he continued staring into those red orbs. He saw Renfield, still clutched in the monster's thin large hands. His face was...mutilated beyond belief. Ruined and painted in crimson. Eyelids torn away. His face no longer resembled that handsome boy from Harlem.
"Renfield—?" Ben began to utter.
A bolt blurred past him and a snap of a cord sounded nearby.
The fanged thing screeched and howled.
Turning back, Ben gazed at Professor Helwing standing behind him, some sort of crossbow aimed at the hideous creature.
The bat-faced man, growled. He flung Renfield away, glaring towards the old man.
Another bolt whipped past Ben.
He looked in time to see the bolt impact the creature's forehead, dead center.
And yet it lived. Howling. Moaning. A rattling coming from its throat, thrashing about, pawing with its elongated bony hands, feeling for the arrow that jetted from his pasty bald white head.
"The torches, quickly," Helwing barked.
Ben gazed at the thing, still thrashing about.
"Private Harker, the torch."
Ben turned away, looking at Helwing and then at the torch still burning on the stone floor.
"Yes, grab it. We have to burn the vampyre before it's too late."
"Vampyre?" Ben breathed.
"Private!"
Somewhere behind him that thing hissed.
Ben snapped awake and snatched the torch and held it to the beast, warding it away somehow like some frightened caveman.
"Now!" Helwing ordered as he fired another bolt at the cloaked thing.
Ben threw his torch.
In an instant, faster than Ben had ever seen a flame kindle, the pawing screeching thing ignited in a rolling inferno. Growling at first and then screaming in a strange piercing howl.
As it fell with Helwing standing guard over the twitching burning body, Ben turned and searched for Renfield.
His friend was not far away, lying motionless next to a slab of worn stone.
Ben rushed to him.
Kneeling, Renfield's lidless eyes glared up at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Half his face had been peeled away. And worse, the once handsome man who many had often mistaken for a white man, who always dressed dapper, even in his patched pants, and loved jazz as much as anyone in Harlem, that once upon a time—his lower jaw had been torn away, leaving his tongue waggling and teeth bloodied as his breath gurgled choked.
Ben turned suddenly away. His stomach a cold knot. Standing over the burning ruin of the thing that had done as this, Helwing unsheathed a silvery looking sword from a cane handle and decapitated the beast.
As he kicked it away, and the shouts of American men could be heard nearby, Ben wept.
Second Interlude
2044
"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you,"
― Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot.
"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,"
―Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen.
Chapter 17
Clyde sat, one leg propped up on the other, laid back with his chin cupped in his hand. Speechless. Motionless. Listening as the needle scraped against the end of the Harlem Hellfighters record. His thoughts swirled over the story Benjamin Harker had just shared. Images fabricated in his mind's eye of a place and time completely forgotten by history, those who walked those streets and lived those lives now long dead...all but for Mr. Harker himself. The bedtime stories his Pepaw had told him hinted at nothing of this tale, but in a way, those stories, the warnings from the desert, it all stemmed from the same place, the same monster as it were. Bald with horrible bat-like features, curved ears, deep, penetrating red eyes. Snout nose and fangs unlike any known living creature.
Standing with a grunt and pop of his knees, Mr. Harker shuffled to the Victrola and pulled up on the needle. He paused, catching his breath and then made his way back to his chair, slowly. Exhausted, winded, he fell back and closed his eyes.
"But..." Clyde began, stopping himself mid-thought.
"Yes?" Mr. Harker croaked, his eyes still closed, head rested on his recliner.
"Fire, is that what kills them?" Clyde looked to Harker.
"If that were so, I seriously doubt we would be talking."
"How did you—"
"We killed that Vermin, but there were others, a great many others we did not kill. If we'd known then...I don't know.
..it's impossible to say..." Harker wheezed, his words sounding heavy and distant, a near whisper as his head shook on the back rest of the recliner, and his eyes shut tight. He smacked his lips. "Would you do me a favor, young Bruner? I've worked up a thirst, but I do not have the energy to—"
"Of course," Clyde said, standing and making his way to the kitchen behind him and down the hall. Passing the framed photos on the wall he glanced again at one of the three men in Egypt, focusing mostly on the strange looking man with the plastic looking face.
Returning with a cup of cold water, Clyde handed the glass to Mr. Harker who took it with trembling grey hands.
Harker sipped, spilling some on his jean overalls. "Shit!" He smoothed the dampness away. Setting the glass next to him, he patted his bib pocket and stuffed more tobacco into his corncob pipe.
Clyde struck a match and offered it to Harker.
Harker allowed Clyde to light his pipe as he toked and blew smoke between his lips. "Thank you," he said as the young man nodded and returned to the couch.
"In the picture," Clyde gestured behind him, "the one of you and two others in Egypt, that's Renfield, isn't it, standing beside you?"
Mr. Harker nodded, his cloudy eyes growing dark.
"And the other was—"
"Professor Helwing." Mr. Harker leaned back, sinking into his recliner, puffing smoke. "After that night in the Argonne Forest, Renfield was sent back to the rear hospital. Helwing explained as much as he could or would for that matter. Jim didn't remember a thing. The gas had knocked him out. He spent three weeks in a field hospital himself. As I understand, he wrote a song about the experience."
He stopped.
With a trembling hand Benjamin reached for the glass of water and drank hungrily. Nearly dropping it, the old man placed the cup back on the side table next to him. He bit down on his pipe and puffed. "Well, back then I was young and after what happened that night I didn't want to believe any of it could be real, wanted to believe the gas had done something with my mind, so I went back to fighting with my regiment. The war ended a year or so after. We were preparing to return home after guarding this German town on the border of France. One night, on the last night, Professor Helwing returned. He wanted help, an assistant. He made plans to travel to Egypt."
Clyde listened attentively. Leaning forward, his gaze never leaving the old man in the recliner. "And you agreed, I take it, judging from the photograph?"
Mr. Harker nodded, white smoke floating around him. He grunted his "yes," and then added, "but only if he agreed that we see Renfield before we go. I'd heard he was still at what they called a 'Nose Tin Shop' in those days, a hospital in London. The doctors didn't want to send him home right away, for fear he'd catch something on those horrid American ships at sea, and besides, England had the best plastic surgeons at that time, the best prosthetics and masks..." again his voice faded, as if snatched up in a flood of memory.
"And when you saw him he wanted to go with you?" Clyde pitched in.
"Yes and no," Mr. Harker said, still somewhat wandering in that different place and time. "Jim pulled some strings for me, got me my release papers from the 15th Infantry, they had plans to disband anyway upon returning home and parading around Harlem. I didn't want anything to do with that. I loved my friends and my unit, but...I'd seen enough. By the time the Professor and I got to London, the doctors had done all they could for Renfield. Fixed him with a molded jaw, a mask of sorts. To cover his eyes, he wore oval sunglasses. The scars...well...they were deep."
Clyde rubbed his face, leaning back now into the couch. "How did he end up going? Why did Helwing want to go to Egypt in the first place?"
More clouds of white smoke. Mr. Harker looked past Clyde, past the wall behind him, past the house and the fields of wheat outside. "Renfield was lonely, I think. The only black American soldier in London, maybe he missed me. All I can say is that my heart sank at the sight of him. The damage that had been done. It brought that whole night back, every last detail, of the creature and how ungodly it was, unnatural, and at that moment I wanted to know everything there was to know about them. What they were, where they came from."
Clyde nodded to himself. "That's why. Helwing wanted to travel to Egypt to learn more about them, about the vampires. But did he? Did you? Is Egypt where they originate?"
Mr. Harker waved him off, fanning smoke in the process. He grunted and finished off the glass of water. Leaning back, he croaked, "Nothing in Egypt but tombs and sand of what was, not was is."
The younger man sighed. "So, nothing, huh."
"I didn't say that. Professor Helwing found clues, the legend written within the walls of Tut's tomb. A story over three thousand years old scrawled in sandscript about a nocturnal plague that haunted what would be the end of his dynasty." Mr. Harker laughed drily. "The papers wrote him as some boy king, but truth is he was more warrior than most know. Back then manhood came earlier than it does now."
Frowning, Clyde leaned forward. "Are you saying—"
"King Tutankhamen hunted vampires? In his own way. A decent killer from what Professor Helwing could gleam from those dusty cracked walls. Oh course, Carter took all the credit of the discovery. Of that the Professor did not abide well with." Harker chewed on the end of the corncob pipe, still looking away, somewhere far off in the distance, smiling wickedly.
Clyde combed his hair back with his hand, shaking and smiling. He looked around the house and shrugged. "So, how did you end up out here? Of all places in the world to settle down, why did you pick Champagne, Texas?"
Mr. Harker took a deep breath and exhaled with a raspy sigh. "Oh, many reasons I suppose. I had gotten tired of the sand and the heat. And it seemed to me at the time, the more answers we found, more and more questions went unanswered. Those painted hieroglyphs never said two cents worth for how to kill the damn things. Only that they beheaded most of them. And they burned the bodies. Beheading and fire, that only kills the body, the drone so to speak, but still they persist. They keep coming. There has to be something else, a ringleader, something that controls them, a—"
"Queen."
Harker and Clyde looked at each other, both silent for a moment.
Benjamin nodded. "Indeed, young Bruner. You are quick."
Clyde exhaled, his thoughts pulling inward, thinking back to what little he knew of insect behavior, of colonies such as bees or termites or ants. It made sense, in some strange way, except... He looked to Harker, "Let's say there is a Queen Vampire, a leader, how is it spreading so quickly? I would think, if there was a queen, only she would be able—"
"Others can spread the disease, but they all belong to Her. The drone retains only fragments of their past life, enough to add to the collective hivemind. Her mind. With each person She turns, the more She knows, and the more dangerous She becomes."
Standing now, Clyde paced the living room. Outside the sun reflected off the golden wheat, glimmering in the last breaths of daylight. "My god," he muttered, more or less to himself.
Harker smirked. "Horrifying, I know."
Clyde stopped and turned to him. "Yes...but how?"
"How?"
"How do you know?"
To this, Harker stopped smiling. "Oh, just how I know most things."
"You found her?"
"She found me."
"When? What happened?"
Harker frowned, thinking back. "Oh, hundred years ago, give or take...when was that?" he growled, more to himself Clyde thought. He exhaled loudly. "After living so long, the mind begins to feel like molasses. The gears are turning, but only so much gets through. If...yes, I remember, we left behind Helwing, he refused to leave those tombs until he found answers to the riddle, the very thing I learned for myself just a few short years later."
"And Renfield?"
Harker sighed again. "Renfield came back with me, back to Harlem. But..."
"What?" Clyde, hands on his hips, was eager to hear more.
Mr. Harker looked away, chewing roug
hly on his corncob pipe. "I can't recall."
"Please, Mr. Harker. What you know—you are our only chance of survival."
More growling. He looked up at the boyish man and sighed. "Don't think too highly of me, young Bruner, never. This particular memory has stubbornly stayed with me, no matter how old I get. I can still see the ship, smell the salt of the New York Harbor. When we got back to Harlem, Renfield was terrified. He'd stopped writing Mina; never told her he'd been hurt. Truth of the matter was, she was never interested in him in that way anyhow. She wrote him, but more like pen pals than lovers. Well...she didn't fancy him; she fancied me, as it turned out. I knew how Renfield felt about her, but still. After everything that had happened, the death and turmoil of war and that horrid creature, and the feeling of failure in Egypt, after all that I figured it was time to settle down and think about living a normal life, a happy life. And Renfield, well...he never forgave me. About a year after we went our separate ways, and to makes matter worse, my friend, Jim Europe was stabbed to death...by a former member of his band, if you can believe that. After the Trenches of the war were filled in, we supposed we left our ghosts there too, but...some people can't shake what they seen, and war and guilt will eat a man alive, if given time." The old man rested his head back on his recliner, his pipe now fizzled out in thin wisps of grey. A tear crept down the side of his wrinkled face.
They were both silent for a while, neither knowing what to say after that.
But after a moment, Clyde asked, "Would you mind sharing with me what happened? How you found the Queen?"
Harker smacked his lips, opening his eyes, staring at the ceiling. "Like I said, young Bruner, She found me."
Clyde nodded. "All the same, will you share with me what happened?"
"What good would that do?"
"Some."
Another sigh. "I'll need another record."
"Sure." Clyde stood and went to the Victrola. Kneeling, he looked at the records within the cabinet. He turned back to Mr. Harker. "Which one?"
The Last Hellfighter Page 10