by Matt Kincade
At the base of the stairs, a man stood up from concealment. He had a thin face and thick plastic-framed glasses, and wore a blood-splattered white apron over a shirt and tie. He held a pistol in his outstretched hands. He drew a bead on Alex.
Alex fired his silenced pistol, and a gaping hole appeared in the man’s head. Red gore spattered the wall behind him.
Alex shouldered through the door and ran for the cover of the car. Halfway there, a second man popped up from behind the trunk, leveling a shotgun at him. Alex dove and rolled. Buckshot tore through the air where he’d been an instant earlier.
Alex came up out of the roll as his attacker rounded the car’s fender, jacking another shell into the shotgun. Alex fired through the car’s windows. Glass shattered. One bullet took the attacker in his chest and another in the left eye. The man took two spastic steps and toppled like a felled tree.
From the balcony a third guard opened up with an M16. Sparks flew as bullets chewed into the car. Alex skidded behind it and crouched. From the door, Carmen fired up at the balcony. The man with the rifle ducked behind a wall.
Something metal sailed off the balcony and skittered across the cement floor. A grenade. Carmen ducked back out the door and hit the dirt.
“Well, shit…” muttered Alex. He dove away as the explosion lifted the rear end of the car up and blew out the high windows of the warehouse. The explosion picked Alex bodily up and flung him against the metal wall. The guard laughed and stood as he drew a bead with his rifle.
Carmen steadied her pistol on the doorframe and shot five times. The guard grunted and fell over the railing like an extra in a western. He hit the cement with a wet thump. Keeping her pistol trained on the guard, Carmen hurried over to Alex. She nudged him with a toe. “Are you all right?”
“Sheeeeeiiiit…” said Alex. He sat upright and held his head. “Now I know what a rodeo clown feels like in a barrel.”
“I shot him,” said Carmen, half to herself, her eyes wide. Sweat trickled down her forehead. “I shot him.”
“Good on ya, darlin’. Keep watchin’ that balcony.” With Carmen standing lookout, Alex stood unsteadily on his feet. “Weren’t that some shit?” he removed the silencer from his pistol. “Not much use bein’ quiet anymore, I guess. Let’s get this done.”
The guard on the floor groaned. Not even breaking stride, Alex ended him with a single bullet.
Alex ascended the stairs with Carmen right behind him. He held his pistol out in a two-handed grip, covering the balcony as it came into sight. On one side, an open area had been made into a lounge, where two sagging couches had been arranged around a TV on a cheap fiberboard cart. An Xbox sat on the floor, along with two controllers. A game of Call of Duty was paused on-screen. On the other side, a glass-fronted office looked out over the dock; behind that was a hallway with several doors.
As they ran up the steps, Alex spotted a wiry, balding man in the office, frantically tapping away at a computer. On the floor, papers burned in a metal trash can. The man turned and saw Alex. He raised his hands in surrender. “Whoa, hey man,” he said, “I just work here. You—”
Alex knocked the man to the ground with a pistol barrel to the side of the head, then tied his hands behind his back with an industrial zip tie. He snarled, “Gimmie a reason, asshole.”
Carmen and Alex continued down the hallway. The first room looked like a corporate office break room, except for the gun locker full of M16s. There was a small round table, a counter with a sink, a refrigerator, and a microwave. A hand-lettered sign next to the sink read, your mother doesn’t work here. clean up after yourself. The next door down the hallway led to a bathroom, and the last room was bare except for a set of bunk beds.
“Okay, place looks clear,” said Alex. He stuck the pistol in his waistband and headed back into the office. A ring of keys hung from a rack on the wall labeled “Cells.” Alex grabbed the keys and tossed them to Carmen. “Go on downstairs and see what you can find. And watch yourself.”
Carmen hurried down the stairs and rounded the corner to a padlocked door. She found the right key and undid the lock. She went down a a second flight of stairs, at the bottom of which she found a starkly lit hallway, lined on one side by cells. Each cell had only a toilet and a sink. All of them were empty, except for one. Crammed into one of the cells, a half dozen or so dark-skinned men and women peered out, huddled in corners, leaning against walls. Hopeless eyes peered out of hopeless faces. Someone whispered, “Socorro” —“Help”—as Carmen crept through the hallway. Still holding the pistol in front of her, she met their eyes and put a finger to her lips. At the end of the hallway, a large metal door waited. She pulled the handle and swung it open.
“Jesucristo.”
The room had white-tiled flooring and walls. Scarred stainless-steel tables. Racks of saws and knives. A butcher’s electric bandsaw. Rows of meat hooks hung from the ceiling. A body—what was left of one—lay splayed on the table. Headless. Legless. One arm sawed off, the other still attached. The severed limbs were stacked neatly on a wheeled cart. Farther on stood a large plastic tub next to a shelf stocked with gallon jugs of hydrochloric acid. She saw a machine that was so strangely out of place that for a second she couldn’t place it. Then she realized—it was a wood chipper. The chipper’s chute was stained with crusted gore. The room reeked of bleach and the caustic tang of acid.
“Oh, God.” Carmen’s stomach heaved. She turned away from the carnage, facing the wall and breathing shallowly until she got herself under control.
Holding the pistol tightly, she walked through the slaughterhouse, noting the storm drains built into the floor, the neatly coiled hose hanging from the wall. She reached the stainless-steel door at the other end of the room. Holding the pistol at the ready, she pulled the handle. It was a walk-in freezer. Body parts lay stacked on metal racks, neatly as firewood.
***
Upstairs, Alex tossed the office. Whatever the guy on the floor had done to the computers, they were a total loss. He went through every drawer, dumped the half-burned scraps from the trash into a garbage bag. He spotted a bulletin board with a number of handwritten notes. He used his phone to photograph it in situ then unpinned all the notes and dumped them into the bag. He grabbed several cell phones that were lying around.
The man on the floor groaned and shifted. Alex hauled him up by his shirt. “Okay, hoss, you got ten seconds to tell me somethin’ that’s gonna change my mind about killin’ you.”
“What do you want to know?” said the man. He didn’t seem to be taking the situation seriously.
Carmen silently entered the room and stood next to Alex, with her arms crossed. “Tell me about the big boss,” he said.
The man was on his knees, hands tied behind his back. He shrugged. “I don’t know much,”
Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “You ain’t making me want to not kill you.”
“Okay, okay. They call him the Don. Don Carlos. Him and Armando go way back. Way back.”
“Is Armando the vamp who left here late last night in the BMW?”
“Yeah.”
“He your boss?”
“Not really. He comes and supervises when he gets hungry.”
“Well, don’t you worry about him. He’s just dust in the wind, now. Where do we find this Don Carlos?”
“Shit, man, you think they tell me?” Alex did his best to jam the gun barrel in the man’s ear. The man cringed. “Shit, okay, okay! They just call it the Villa. That’s all. ‘Armando’s going to the Villa to talk to the Don.’ That kind of thing.”
Alex sucked at his teeth for a moment, trying to dislodge a sesame seed from lunch. “Okay hoss, one last question. Lightning round.” Alex nodded to Carmen, who pulled out the picture of Mia. “You seen this girl?”
The man looked at the picture for a moment. “Yeah, she was here. Maybe a week ago.”
“Are you sure?” asked Alex.
“That girl was hard to forget. God, what a tight little pa
ckage.”
Carmen narrowed her eyes, but otherwise didn’t react.
“Where is she now?”
“The prettiest ones go to the Don. Armando or one of the others comes and picks them up.”
Carmen stared at him for a long moment. “I have another question,” she said. “What goes on downstairs? In the butcher shop?”
“We, uh, we get rid of the bodies afterward. Our customers drop them off when they pick up new feeders. It’s part of the service we offer.”
“Feeders?” Carmen repeated.
The man lowered his head and said nothing.
“So what do you then? Grind them up? Dissolve them in acid?”
“A little of both. Vampires only want the blood. But there are other…customers…who want meat. We’re trying to expand our customer base. But some parts you can’t…” He stopped himself.
Carmen’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you the one who puts on that bloody apron downstairs? Is that part of your job? Or don’t you get your hands dirty?”
The man hesitated. “We take turns.” He nodded toward a whiteboard on the wall with a duty roster drawn upon it.
Carmen took a step back and turned to Alex, who still held his gun against the man’s head. “I’m done.”
Alex pulled the trigger. Blood and bone splattered the desktop, stippling a white coffee mug with red. The lifeless body slumped to the floor.
“Okay,” Alex stepped over the fresh corpse. He used a handkerchief to wipe the spray of blood from his face. “You get them prisoners outta here. Get ’em all ready to go, and tell ’em to be calm.”
“What are we going to do with them?”
“Don’t rightly know,” admitted Alex. “Guess we could just set ’em loose, or we could call the police. Gettin’ sent back to Mexico beats hell outta gettin’ chopped up for sausage.”
“There was a van outside,” Carmen said, “I say we give them the keys and wish them well.”
Alex nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“I’ll go talk to them.”
“We ain’t gonna be here but a few more minutes. You best be ready to go as soon as you’re done.”
***
Holding the keys tightly in her hand, Carmen headed down the stairs into the crude basement. She was met with dozens of pleading eyes. “Silencio,” she said, as she found the right key. The padlock fell to the floor, and the crudely welded cell door swung open. Imploring the prisoners to be calm and quiet, she led them up the stairs to the warehouse section.
They were four men and three women, not particularly old, not particularly young. Weather-etched, deep-brown faces and dirty clothes. Tired, hungry, scared. One of the men, dressed in jeans and a faded Adidas soccer T-shirt, clutched at his belly as he stumbled up the stairs.
She spotted Alex on the stairs. “Alex,” she called out, “how are we doing?”
“Real good,” he said. He had his gun holstered and held the railing loosely as he descended the stairs, the other hand steadying an overfull black satchel. “Even if they managed to get word out, I figure we still got ten minutes or so before we can expect any reinforcements.”
The man in the Adidas shirt fell to one knee, grimacing and holding his gut. A matronly-looking woman in a plaid shirt moved to help him.
“Cuál es su problema?” asked Carmen.
“Sick,” said the woman. “He was worse before. We thought he was dead.”
“Tengo hambre…” moaned the man. I’m hungry.
Alex slipped the strap of the satchel off his shoulder. The bag thumped to the floor. He started forward. “Hey, now wait a sec.”
The man roared, “Hambre!” He grabbed the woman’s arm and dragged her down. Her neck stretched invitingly.
The man opened his mouth to reveal razor-pointed canines. He tore into the woman’s neck. She screamed and blood spurted while he ripped away a chunk of her neck. He held her in an iron grip and lapped frantically at the fountain of blood. The other immigrants stumbled backwards, crying out in fear and horror.
In the same instant, Alex lunged. He planted a side kick squarely in the vampire’s chest. The vampire let go of the woman and stumbled to the ground. The woman collapsed, blood still pumping from her neck.
The vampire instantly sprang up again, growling and baring his fangs at Alex. Blood covered the lower half of his face like a mask. He charged the vampire hunter.
In an eye blink, Alex’s .45 appeared in his hand. He pumped three rounds into the vampire’s chest and sidestepped as it lurched blindly forward. One well-placed leg tripped the creature, and it again crashed to the floor. Alex stood motionless, his eyes flat, dead pools. He kept the smoking .45 trained on the vampire.
The vampire stood again, this time with more difficulty. For the first time, he seemed to notice the plump middle-aged woman on the ground, spasming as her lifeblood ran out onto the cement. He saw Carmen, blood up to her elbows, trying desperately to staunch the flow.
Something changed in the vampire’s face, as if he’d been hit by a bucket of cold water. The savage gleam left his eyes. His expression shifted from animal savagery to pure, cold horror. He looked down at his bloody hands then at the blood leaking from his chest.
“Aye Dios mio,” he said, almost a whisper. “Dios mio, Dios mio, Dios mio. No, no, no, no, no…”
One of the other refugees, a thin woman with salt-and-pepper hair, clutched at her chest. Tears welled in her eyes. “Mateo?”
The vampire turned away from her, tears streaming down his face. He covered his mouth with his hands and sobbed.
Alex stood like a stone idol, the pistol never wavering.
The vampire glanced back once more at the semicircle of people who surrounded him. With an inhuman scream of grief and horror, he bolted for the door.
He made it ten steps past the shade of the building. Flames burst from his hands and his neck, spreading to his head. His shirt ignited. In seconds the blaze engulfed him. He stopped and fell to his knees. His screams went on and on, the fire raging like a blowtorch. A thick, greasy column of smoke rose into the blue sky.
The fire was as fast as it was intense. In minutes, only a smoldering pile of ashes remained.
The group stood there at the door. No one spoke. Alex turned away. “Poor bastard. Didn’t even know what he was.”
Carmen checked the woman for a pulse then stood up. Blood covered her forearms and dripped from her fingers. She stared down at the vampire’s first and last victim. “She’s dead.”
Alex holstered his pistol and picked up the satchel again, his face as unreadable as a poker player’s. “Drag her outside so she don’t turn. Otherwise, Nothin’s changed. We got a schedule to keep. Andale.”
Carmen went to the bathroom and cleaned the blood off of her hands and arms, then found the keys to the van hung on a row of cup hooks in the office.
The van started on the first try. The former prisoners piled in, still in shock. Carmen leaned in the window. “Vaya con Dios,” she said.
“Y tu tambien,” mumbled the man behind the wheel.
Carmen and Alex climbed into their own truck and followed the van. As they passed the factory, they saw workers peering fearfully from behind forklifts and pallets of rock. Alex ignored them.
Leaving the front gate, he turned right.
“The city is the other way,” said Carmen.
“Yeah, but that’s the way reinforcements will be comin’ from. This’ll take us an hour or two out of our way, but hopefully with no surprises.”
They drove in silence for a while. Finally Carmen said, “Christ, what a mess.”
“Wasn’t so bad,” said Alex. “We shut the place down, killed some bad guys, got some intel, and saved five hostages.”
Carmen shook her head. “And lost two.”
“We lost one. Mateo was dead ’fore we got there. He just didn’t know it yet. And like I always say, it’s a rough business. Five out of six ain’t bad, all things considered. You did real good back there
.”
She let out a long sigh. “And what did we really do? What’s to stop them from opening up shop again tomorrow?”
“Nothin’. Ain’t nothin’ to stop ’em getting a new place, starting all over again. Matter of fact, I’m sure they got two or three around here already. See, if we weren’t tryin’ to move so fast and find your sister, we could watch that place for weeks, find out where all of them cars go to. Might find a hundred vamps that way.”
“And you’d just sit there and watch all those people die?”
“Mean old world,” Alex said with a shrug. “You gotta look at the big picture. People die every day. You can’t save all of ’em.”
Alex plugged the input cord of his iPod into the stereo. The raucous intro to Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” pumped through the speakers. The scenery, the throb of the engine, the rocking of the cab seemed to synchronize with the driving rock ‘n’ roll beat. The hot desert air blew through the cab. Alex chucked his hard hat out the window, picked his battered Stetson up off the seat and plopped it on his head. Smiling, he bobbed his head and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
Carmen looked out the window at the blurred desert scrub, the mountains scrolling by behind them. “What’s it like to be a vampire?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that one back there. Mateo. In the movies, vampires are always evil. You know, their whole personality changes. Just, boom, evil. But he seemed…normal. It was like he was in some kind of fugue state. He just disappeared, and then he came back, and he was horrified. How does that work? How much control do they have?”
“Well, look at it this way. How much control you got right now? You gotta eat, right? Gotta drink water, gotta do lotsa things. How long could you just stop yourself from drinking water, if it was around and you was dying of thirst? From what I seen, it don’t really change their personality. Just gives ’em this hunger and only one way to feed it. Their own brain does the rest.”