Josh wiped the ash from his face and opened his eyes. On the floor of ad seg, he saw something that made him smile. He got to his feet and rushed to help Williams get the monster under control.
“Take him to the open cells,” Josh grunted.
“Why?” Asked Williams, looking over his shoulder at the cells that Thomas had kicked open. He smiled too. A long, pale line of pure daylight was shining from each of the open doors.
Together, the two men carried the thrashing vampire into what had been Sally’s cell. They walked over the remains of the steel door and right up onto the bed. The vampire opened his mouth wide, craning his neck to bite at Josh. Williams grabbed him by the forehead as both men forced the vampire’s face against the bars of the small, east-facing window.
The vampire’s pupils shrunk to pinpoints and he wailed in pain, as the pale light of the blue sky sunk into his skin. The sun was not quite risen, but the sky was alight with predawn. Most of the storm clouds had passed, but there were still some lingering. Five seconds passed, with Josh and Williams using every muscle they had to restrain the panicking vampire. The sunlight wasn’t killing it. Jesus, thought Josh, if sunlight doesn’t work, we’re all dead. Another five seconds, and the vampire’s skin started to blister.
“Hold on,” said Josh, more to himself than to Williams. “Just... hold... on.”
Carlos came into the room and immediately got the idea. He joined his compatriots in trapping the vampire against the window. Ten seconds later, tendrils of pale grey smoke started to rise off the vampire, as he held his eyes shut and shook against his captors. Then there was an orange flash, and a sliver of the sun appeared on the horizon. The vampire went up in flames. The three men all let go and stepped back, watching the vampire collapse in on himself, and disappear. All that was left was a lot of dust floating in the column of light.
*****
Outside the prison, Virginia Elliot was still wide awake at five in the morning. The cops had finally showed up a few hours earlier, but for some reason they weren’t storming the prison. Which meant Virginia wasn’t recording any footage. It had been a terrible night spent sitting in her cold, uncomfortable car, brightened up by the occasional visit from a surly guard telling her to buzz off.
She was currently sitting on the hood of her car, using a pair of binoculars to try and spy into C Pod. It was hopeless, since the prisoners had blanketed the windows before she even got there. Except for the windows on the end of the pod. That, she had deduced, was the solitary wing, meaning anyone locked in there obviously hadn’t been a part of the riot.
Still, it was better than nothing.
She had just about given up, when she saw movement. One of the windows on the end. Maybe a sleeping inmate was just waking up. She raised the binoculars.
It was a fight! Finally, some action. She watched as two men wrestled a third up against the bars. Two on one. Really fair fight, guys.
Then a fourth guy came into the tiny window. As they jostled, Virginia thought she saw a guard’s uniform on one of the attackers. There was a guard helping two inmates pin down a third!
She swapped out the binocs for her camera, popping the lens cap as she raised it. This lens wasn’t as good as binoculars, but it would have to do. Her own curiosity was less important than documentation. She started snapping photos.
Then it got weird.
The man in the middle of it all started to smoke like his clothes were on fire. But the men still held him tight. The man’s face seemed to be almost melting. And then his skin burst into flames. As the gang backed off, the flames died away and where there had been a man only a second before, now was a crumbling pile of ashes, then nothing.
She laid back against the windshield, dumbstruck by what she had seen, trying to cobble some sense out of it. She was only shaken out of her thoughts a few seconds later, when the sun crested the horizon and shot blinding rays of light into her eyes.
She rubbed her eyes, stung by the light against her dark-adjusted eyes. She looked at her camera. Then at the window, then at the sun. She traced the imaginary line out that window to the rising sun. She shook her head.
“No fucking way.”
*****
Williams, Josh, and Carlos stepped back out of the cell, to the sound of a disappointed “Aww” from the crowd of vampires.
“Good news, you got like five of them. Bad news, that leaves about seventy-five or eighty-five more to go,” said Carlos.
“Got a mirror?” Asked Williams.
Josh shook his head, then continued to scan the room. There was more light now, and he was becoming more aware of his surroundings. On the wall behind the guard desk there was a red metal cabinet. Josh pulled the cabinet door open.
Behind it was a reel of hose, and a red fire axe. Josh unspooled the hose and dragged the nozzle over in front of the gates.
“What are you doing?” Asked Williams.
“Sally doesn’t have any time left. We need to clear a path.”
“With a fire hose?” Asked Carlos.
Josh raised the plastic cross, and held it in front of the nozzle. “You never heard of holy water?”
“They turned off the water,” said Carlos.
“Just the basic plumbing,” said Williams, “they’d never turn off the fire hoses.”
“That’s not holy water!” shouted one of the vampires who was right in front of the hose. “That won’t do anything.”
“You’ve been undead for like a half an hour and now you’re an expert on religion?” asked Josh, mockingly. “Stay there, see if you don’t burst into flames.” He turned to Williams. “Crank it, but only give me as much pressure as I can handle.”
Williams turned the valve, and the hose flooded with water Josh steadied himself. He held the hose tightly under one arm, and with the other hand, the one that was holding the cross, he pulled back the switch on the nozzle, unleashing a jet of water.
The vampires scrambled as Josh placed the cross in front of the nozzle, so that all the water spraying through the bars had to pass over the cross. They ran down the central corridor of the cell block, and as the water formed a stream down the middle of the walkway, the vampires parted around it, hiding in cells.
Josh turned off the water.
“Did it work?” asked Williams.
“Don’t really know, but it scared them off.” Josh shook the last drops of water off the cross, and handed it back to Carlos. Before them was a wide-open cell block, that they knew contained at least a couple dozen pissed-off vampires. Beyond that, maybe, was Sally.
Josh dropped the hose and picked up his stake. Williams opened the gate, leaving them a clear path. On his way out from behind the desk, he scooped up the red-painted fire axe from behind the broken glass.
Josh rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “We go straight through. If you have to stop moving, make sure you stop in the light. Open as many windows as you can but don’t get trapped inside a cell. We clear?”
Carlos held the crucifix and drew the sign of the cross over his chest. Williams reclaimed his own stake, tucked it into his belt, and stepped up beside Josh.
“Boys, I never thought I’d say this to a couple of inmates...” Williams said as he rested the axe on his shoulder, “Let’s kick some ass.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Santos Vega rubbed his wet right hand around his neck, saying a quiet prayer as he did so. Once again seeking sanctuary in the multifaith worship centre, Santos was reapplying holy water in much the same manner as one reapplies sunblock after a swim.
He still held his stake, temporarily in his left hand so that his right could be used for the anointing. The tip of the stake, where Santos had stabbed Leo in the neck, was now covered in a fine layer of ash. About a minute after Leo’s blood had left his body, it dried up into grey powder.
It was sunny outside. Santos couldn’t see the sun from this windowless room, but outside the hallways were brighter with light from outside bouncing around
the walls. The impenetrable gloom of the last eight hours had lifted, and the sense of impending death had gone with it. Santos had always known when he was in trouble, and that feeling had passed. He was in the clear now. There was no way that any vampire—not Leo, not that nameless thing from the mess hall, not anyone else—would dare to try and fight inside the chapel. The room itself was holy, and the man who occupied it had already proven his strength in a fight. You would have to be completely insane to try and fight Santos of all people, in the church of all places.
But then again, Leo Jimenez was completely insane. Santos wondered what the odds were that second-hand sunlight bounced off a beige wall would actually hurt a vampire.
After Santos was finished with his neck, he checked the level of the holy water in the stoup. It was still about half-full.
“Thank you, Jesus,” said Santos.
Five minutes later, someone threw a glass bottle in from the hallway. The top of the bottle was stuffed with a flaming rag, and on impact the Molotov cocktail exploded all over the back wall of the chapel.
Leo Jimenez strutted in, craning his neck to show the scar where his stake-wound had already healed. His facial scar, which he’d acquired while living, had not changed. He was still as ugly as ever.
“Final round,” he taunted. “Maybe you thought I wouldn’t came in here?” He made a show placing his foot down on the red carpet. Santos kept his mouth tightly shut, and shrugged. Leo continued to gloat. “You and your little buddies took down all the crosses. Now it’s just an empty room with a broken bench lying on the floor.”
Santos glances around, his eyes straining against the sudden brightness of the fire in his eyes. There were no more crosses, no communion wafers. He briefly wondered about trying to find a Star of David or something in the storage room to see if that would burn Leo, but he didn’t have time now. All that protected him was the broken, upside-down pew that lay between them.
“All I see in here now, is a holy cleansing fire behind you...” Leo waved his hand toward the fire like a spokesmodel pointing to a lovely new car. “...and the one and only exit behind me. So I guess if you wanna live you’ll have to get through me.”
Santos still kept his mouth shut. He flared his nostrils, shook his head and rested his hands on his hips. His posture was less ‘bring it on’ and more ‘are you done yet?’
Leo continued his speech. “Maybe before you roast to death in an agonizing fire, you could answer something for me.” His eyes widened, trying with paper-thin earnestness to look contrite. “What is it you had that I didn’t?” Leo’s voice was getting louder. His calm, penitent facade breaking away to show the fragile, broken mind underneath. “Huh? How the hell does a little pussy like you become a leader, when I got no fear and half of them still don’t listen?”
Leo snapped. He charged at Santos, who feinted left and then dropped to his right. Santos stuck his leg out, hoping use Leo’s momentum against him and flip him into the fire. Leo was too quick for that, diving after Santos and connecting an elbow to Santos’s chin. They tumbled to the ground, with Leo wrestling his way to the top. They were only three feet from the flames that now engulfed the entire back wall and most of the ceiling. Just enough space that if he chose to, Leo could roll to his right, carry Santos with him, and toss Santos into the flames. Instead he lost himself in rage, pounding his fists into the body of the man he had tried so hard to become.
“Why did they follow you? What did you have?” Leo pounded on Santos’s ribs. Santos swung his stake, but this time Leo was ready. He caught Santos’s wrist with both of his hands. With a rage-fuel twist of one hand, Leo tore the stake free from Santos’s fingers, breaking several bones in the process. He tossed the stake into the fire.
“I was always braver. I was willing to what you wouldn’t.”
Leo reset his hands on Santos’s wrist now, and with a vicious snap, he broke Santos’s forearm like tearing into a baguette. Santos grunted through gritted teeth as his bones tore through the skin, and rich purple arterial blood spurted to the wall four feet away. Too much blood. From too direct a source. He was bleeding out.
“I was always smarter. I was the one who made the Eighteenth what it is today. My decisions. My orders!”
Santos stared at Leo through watery eyes, and still refused to respond.
“Now I’m stronger than you. I’m faster. I’m immortal. I’ll be running the streets long after they forget that you ever existed. So tell me, before you die, what do you have that I don’t?”
Santos took a deep breath through his nose, sounding almost like a sigh. Then he exhaled in jolting, stilting breaths through his nose. It was as if he was holding back laughter. Leo leaned in, grabbing Santos by the head and forcing his rival to look him in the eye. Leo snarled, curling back his quivering, scarred lips to reveal the new jagged teeth that he wanted so badly to use.
“Tell me!”
As soon as Leo was close enough, Santos took another deep breath, his chest rising, resistance slipping from his weakening body. And then he opened his mouth to spit a wide, hard spray of holy water straight into Leo’s pitiful demonic face. No longer burdened with a mouthful of holy water, Santos spoke.
“I’m better looking.”
Leo wailed in horror as his face flooded with acrid black smoke. The holy water burned at him like he was being held over flames. He rolled left, away from both Santos and the fire, his fingers scratching at the agonizing burning of his face. As he scratched, pieces of his skin came away under his nails. The holy water burned through the tips of Leo’s fingers as he tried desperately to stop the burning in his face. As he scratched under his right eye, Leo’s fingers hooked into the socket and pulled down, tearing away the flesh of his cheek right down to the bone.
When the holy fire subsided, Leo’s fingertips were pale brown bone to the first knuckle. His face looked like it had been barbequed for several hours. What little flesh remained had not been melted like a normal burn victim, but charred black like an overdone hamburger. His eyes had exploded, leaving burnt white goop inside unlidded sockets. Despite the extensive damage, Santos could still recognize the slits on the right side of Leo’s lips where the scar had crossed his mouth. He whimpered quietly, crying with a face that his nerves no longer reached, weeping with eyes that had no tear ducts.
Santos stood over Leo, not victorious but sad.
He reached down and lifted Leo to his feet. Santos hooked his arm around his old rival’s shoulders, and helped him stand. He walked slowly, all but carrying Leo, who was more like a headless chicken than a man at this point.
“Do you remember when we were just kids growing up in a bad neighbourhood? We swore that until our dying day, we’d take of each other, protect each other, be brothers. We took an oath. Eighteenth for life!”
Santos heaved Leo into the fire, and the flames swallowed him so completely it was like Leo Jimenez had never existed at all.
“The words are ‘Eighteenth for life.’ You died an hour ago.”
*****
John Norris dragged his former girlfriend and current prize by the hair on the back of her head. Sally walked, barely, in a hunched-over scramble where her head was only as high off the ground as Norris’s hip. He dragged her to the entrance to the stairs, then up to the balcony overlooking the cafeteria. They walked a good distance, about halfway around the room, before he turned sharply to knee her hard in the ribs. Sally dropped to her knees again, and stayed there.
She was breathing in shallow gasps, and her eyes were running, but she refused to break down completely and cry. Holding her arms up to rub the back of her scalp and hide her head from further punches, she choked out the question of why.
“They can see us from here,” said Norris, sounding distant. “They will all stand down there and watch as the master has you, and when you’re dry he’ll toss you down to them like scraps from the dinner table. Everyone will have a bite.” He looked down at her, seeming to emerge from the fog of his fantasies,
patiently waiting for her to lift her eyes to meet his. He looked at peace. Once she made eye contact, he continued.
“And then the master will make me. He’ll drink of my blood and lay me down to rise again. I’ll be stronger, I’ll be immortal. None of this life will matter then. I’ll be reborn as something you can’t even conceive. No more inmates, no more getting up in the mornings. Think of it, Sally. I’ll finally be able to kill that bitch at home and I won’t care because I’ll be different. The new me. Immortal.”
Sally started laughing, an involuntary shuddering where her shoulders shook and her breaths became harsh, short little bursts from her mouth. She wiped her eyes, and tried to hold back the laugh, but somehow it wouldn’t be contained.
“What’s so funny?”
“You really would have to die before you’d leave your wife.” She snorted and her shoulders started shaking again. Norris swung a backhand slap at her face, but her arms caught most of it. He didn’t bother to try again. They waited there in silence, Norris standing rigid, looking out over the mess hall like a king addressing the courtyard while Sally quietly knelt at his feet.
“The master is very close to finished here. Once he’s had the buffet, he’ll want dessert. Any minute now. You’ll be my gift to him. To show my worth. The rest weren’t really supposed to turn. He bit them because they were food, not because they deserved to ascend. But I’m different. He told me. I’m better.”
Sally was listening to the man who used be her lover, the man she cared for so very deeply until only minutes ago, but one of his words stuck out a little more than the rest. The word that caught her attention was “gift.” Sally continued her hunched-over act of weeping, but beneath herself she rolled up the sleeve on her oversized prison uniform shirt, revealing her wrist.
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