Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  “Shut up and eat,” Cody said, keeping the pressure of the .38 steady on the sheriff’s temple.

  Wordlessly, Bittner continued to chew.

  Cody watched the sheriff, but he was listening to the vampires. Listening hard. They seemed immersed in their ghastly buffet, the bar echoing with their frenzied smacking and the wet, ripping sound of dividing flesh. Intermittently, a bone would fracture with a dull snap.

  Cody leaned over, selected a bottle and smashed its bottom on one of the shelves under the bar. The sweet smell of gin clotted the air. As the alcohol soaked into his pants and his boots, Cody listened to hear if they’d been discovered.

  The sounds of feasting continued.

  At length, his mouth stuffed with bluebells, Bittner said, “Why in hell’d you do that? That was good gin.”

  “Eat your flowers.”

  Bittner munched them quietly now, perhaps grown used to the taste.

  Maybe three minutes had gone by when Cody switched the gun to Bittner’s other temple and scooted around as quietly as he could so that he was crouching next to the sheriff. It had gotten very quiet in Marguerite’s.

  “What now?” Bittner whispered, eyes flitting about the darkness in terror.

  “We wait a minute.”

  “Wait for what?” Bittner said, his voice a quavery soprano. “They’re gonna find us back here and they’re gonna drink our blood. Holy God, I never seen such a—”

  Bittner cut off as a low, monstrous voice echoed through the bar. The language was one Cody’d never heard before, but the voice was unmistakably Adam Price’s, the voice Cody had heard back at the jail when Price had transformed. Gravelly, ancient, the kind of voice you’d hear if you died and learned you hadn’t been admitted by St. Peter.

  Cody bit his bottom lip to stifle a scream.

  Bittner’s eyes weren’t little any longer. They were the size of half dollars, and nearly full of white. “Holy God,” Bittner murmured in his weak soprano. “Holy God!”

  That’s right, Cody thought. A man like you only thinks of God when things have gone too far.

  Cody took a deep suck of air and let out it slowly, steadying himself. Do it now, he thought. And do it right because you only have one chance.

  “Stand up,” he told Bittner.

  But Bittner didn’t seem to hear him, only kept on riddling the dimness with those white, panicked glances.

  Cody got the barrel of the Smith & Wesson under Bittner’s jaw, drove it upward so the man had no choice but to stand if he didn’t want his chin skewered by oiled steel.

  As they rose, Cody took the gun away from Bittner’s face and shifted it to the meat of the man’s hip. He held it low enough so the vampires wouldn’t see it, both their angle and the sheriff’s girth impeding their view.

  When Cody and Bittner had straightened, Cody was able to pick out all five of the vampires right away. It wasn’t difficult. The farthest from them was Adam Price, who had wrapped his freakishly long vampire fingers around Grizzly’s throat and forced the behemoth to his knees. Casually, Price strangled him. Grizzly’s wild black mane of hair jittered as he entered his death throes, but Adam Price hardly moved. The vampire leader merely gazed remorselessly down at his bested foe. Beside Cody, Bittner stifled a sob as Price’s fingers squelched through the distressed flesh of Grizzly’s neck. The dead giant slouched forward, his blood washing over his shoulders in pulsing sheets. Rather than lapping at the scarlet froth covering his knuckles, Adam Price seemed content to watch his victim bleed to death.

  With the exception of Price, all the vampires were feasting on their vanquished victims. Dragomir scooped up an emaciated man of indeterminate age and thrashed him on the floor as if he were beating the dust out of an old rug. Horton got hold of a man by the privates, and before the man could bring up his hands to protect himself, Horton ripped the crotch of his pants away, along with the man’s genitals. As the man howled in torment, Cody realized it was Deputy John Ebright. A moment later Horton knelt and burrowed into the gory mess of the man’s abdomen to feed.

  Ebright’s screams went on for a good while.

  Angela and Penders lay near each other looking like mangled heaps of offal. Angela’s slug-torn body was draped over an inert figure, her long, cloven tongue lapping weakly at the man’s spurting throat. To her immediate left, Penders lay facedown in a puddle of blood slowly spreading from a disemboweled corpse. For a moment Cody watched, fascinated, as the bullet holes that spread from Penders’s bare back like red cactus blossoms began to close and knit together.

  As long as they can get enough blood in time, Cody thought, they can rebuild their bodies.

  Unless, his dad’s voice reminded him, you lop off their heads.

  Remembering the way he’d killed Dmitri Seneslav both strengthened his resolve and brought his gaze to the two figures in the foreground. These two, Billy Horton and Dragomir Seneslav, were halfway between where Price waited and where Cody stood with his gun shoved into Sheriff Bittner’s side.

  Cody had once seen a pack of feral mongrels run down and devour a screaming calf. Cody had only been six at the time and too young to save the animal, but for months after he’d been plagued with nightmares of the calf’s yelping and the dogs’ snarling, inexorable attack. Horton and Seneslav looked very much the way those mongrels had looked, from the vicious shredding dealt by their claws to the rabid tearing of their deadly teeth. They even growled like dogs. Horton was digging his way into the side of his victim’s neck, the man so recently expired that the severed arteries sprayed brightly over Horton’s elongated face. Dragomir’s feeding was even more violent and even more bestial; he’d buried his whole head in the guts of his victim, a ginger-haired man who didn’t look old enough to be served alcohol here, much less lose his life in such a grisly fashion. The young man was undoubtedly dead though. Cody could tell that by the way his unblemished face joggled on his thin stalk of a neck. The sight of it chilled Cody to the marrow, but he knew there’d never be a better opportunity.

  “Now walk beside me,” he muttered, hoping Price wouldn’t hear. “Nice and slow.”

  Bittner tensed, but did as he was bidden. Together they moved toward the end of the bar, the sheriff to Cody’s left and slightly in the lead so the vampires wouldn’t see the .38 jammed into his side. As they emerged from the shelter of the bar, Cody had a sudden worry. In many of the legends he’d heard, a person bitten by a vampire became a vampire. After all, wasn’t Angela living—or undead—proof of that? Drawing closer to where Horton and Dragomir champed and swallowed, Cody imagined the roomful of corpses rising as one and turning their new vampiric faces toward him. Then they’d reach for him, groping, a dark ocean of them rolling toward him in an unbroken mass of elongated, slavering maws, their orange eyes rapturous and glowing…

  “Dragomir!” Cody called.

  The head buried inside the ginger-haired boy’s guts snapped up and regarded him uncomprehendingly. Beside Cody, Sheriff Bittner moaned and stood rigid. Cody ground the barrel deeper into Bittner’s side to remind the man it was there. If the sheriff bolted, everything would be lost.

  The entire length of Dragomir’s face was painted red. Cody caught a faint whiff of fecal matter and wondered if one of the men had shat himself or if Dragomir had merely split open one of his victim’s intestines.

  Recognition followed then, and Dragomir’s endless bottom jaw hinged lower in obscene anticipation.

  “God forgive me,” Cody whispered.

  Without waiting any longer, Cody reached across the sheriff’s body with the broken gin bottle and plunged it into Bittner’s big gut. Bittner doubled up, hands instinctively closing over Cody’s wrist, but before the large man could dislodge the razor-sharp glass, Cody wrenched it down, unzipping the man’s guts. Bittner let loose with a bloodcurdling shriek and began to tumble forward, but Cody released the broken bottle and, quickly shoving the .38 down the front of his trousers, hooked his arms under the man’s sweaty armpits. They both almos
t fell anyway, Bittner’s considerable weight towing Cody forward like an anchor, but because he’d been expecting Bittner to fold in on himself, Cody was able to brace them both up by planting his foot between Bittner’s boots and hauling the big man backward. Bittner tottered into Cody, and for a crazy second he was sure the huge sheriff would fell them both. The image that flashed into his mind was monstrously absurd: Bittner pinning Cody beneath him like an inexpert lumberjack crushed under the weight of a falling oak. But Cody kept them both on their feet, and though he couldn’t see Dragomir from his current position, he did hear Adam Price call out, “Dragon!”

  Cody imagined the fiendish vampire visage of the remaining Seneslav twin as it saw the blood gushing from Bobby Bittner’s ruined belly…the depthless hunger in those lunatic orange eyes. The temptation would be too great for the vampire. Cody heard two sets of footfalls, one undoubtedly Dragomir’s, the other likely belonging to Adam Price.

  Bittner still writhed in Cody’s arms, a deep gurgling issuing from his throat.

  “DRAGON!” Adam Price bellowed, but then Bittner and Cody were both driven backward with concussive force, and the world was filled with the snarling and growling of the vampire.

  Cody crawled out from under the twisting bodies and beheld the sheriff’s thrashing head, the blood spurting from the gaping wound in his gut.

  Dragomir Seneslav had begun to feed.

  Price was on Dragomir at once.

  “Stop it, goddamn you!” he shouted, seizing his comrade’s flexing arms and straining to detach him from Bittner’s glistening entrails. Cody pushed to his feet and started to back away.

  “DRAGOMIR!” Price bellowed, his grinding voice so deep and loud that it shivered the remaining windows.

  Price seized Dragomir but was unable to detach him from Bittner. As the vampires struggled, the tendons in Price’s straining throat stood out like telegraph cables. And though Dragomir was gripped by the unquenchable bloodlust aroused by his fresh victim, Price finally tore the vampire away.

  Cody glanced to his left, suddenly certain one of the other creatures would be vaulting toward him, but Horton was still immersed in his victim’s throat, and Penders and Angela still fed languidly, their damaged bodies quietly but steadily mending. Cody took a step in their direction, thinking he could maybe sneak by them and slip through one of the shattered windows, but rejected the idea almost as soon as it had come. The wounded vampires certainly looked vulnerable, but he couldn’t wager his life on that. Horton would catch him. Or worse, Angela. Being ripped to pieces by his once-wife was the worst death Cody could envision, primarily because it would carry with it one final humiliation.

  He cast a glance behind him and glimpsed the darkened stage. Wouldn’t there be a door back there somewhere? The stage was located at the rear of Marguerite’s bar, which meant the backstage area bordered the alley. Surely there was an exit…

  When Cody looked back at Dragomir and Adam Price, his breathing faltered and his legs went limp. Price was supporting Dragomir similarly to how Cody had moments ago supported Bittner, only now the two creatures were facing each other, Dragomir bent double, his scythelike talons pawing at his throat, and Price leaning solicitously nearer.

  Cody reached the stage. Without taking his eyes off the pair of vampires, he climbed onto it, got gingerly to his feet and began stealing toward the inky blackness at the rear of the stage.

  He froze at a flurry of motion. Dragomir had shoved Price away. The twin straightened, his expression of bewilderment easy to discern even in this poor light. He was shaking his ghoulish face, his talons kneading his throat.

  Price shouted something in the unfamiliar tongue he’d used earlier, something that sounded like, “Neerob too.” But Dragomir gave no sign of having heard. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, his talons now clawing frantically at his flesh.

  “PRESTAN!” Price commanded, and though Cody didn’t understand the actual words, their meaning was clear enough: Stop that.

  But Dragomir didn’t. He continue to rake his throat as if there were something precious buried within that he was intent on exhuming. Ribbons of pale flesh flew from the shoveling claws, the gallons of blood he’d ingested first misting out of the wounds and then, though Price grappled with him, jetting in crimson geysers.

  Horton had finally abandoned his kill to witness the bizarre scene. In the foyer of Marguerite’s saloon, Cody could see Penders struggling to his feet, though Angela remained slumped over the dead body transfusing her.

  Price waded closer and finally grabbed hold of his friend’s wrists, but now something was happening to the rest of Dragomir’s body that had nothing to do with the lacerations in his throat.

  Dragomir’s flesh was turning black.

  Cody knew he should escape immediately, and indeed he’d made it to the far corner of the stage and was concealed in the shadows. But he had to know if what he’d suspected was true, had to know if he’d claimed a second member of the five original vampires.

  In Dragomir’s eyes was no longer surprise or confusion. The expression on his darkening face was agony, commingled with a species of horrified sorrow. Dragomir bellowed in anguish. Price loosed Dragomir’s wrists and took hold of the vampire’s shoulders because no longer was the skin simply changing color; it was puckering as well, like overripe fruit left desiccating on a windowsill.

  Cody watched, elated and appalled, as Dragomir Seneslav withered in Adam Price’s freakish hands. The flesh now resembled burned paper. Cody saw it flaking off of the vampire’s forehead, its cheeks. The eyes remained huge and starey, but the rest of its features had drawn down to a blackened wad, the charred husk of a body sinking gradually into nothingness. Adam Price grasped what was left of Dragomir’s shoulders for as long as he could, and then with an inarticulate cry jerked the withered body against him. Price’s long, vulpine face contorted in an expression that Cody thought eerily human. Price pressed the flaking remains of his friend against him a few seconds longer; then what was left of Dragomir Seneslav scattered like windblown ashes.

  Adam Price watched the black flakes float silently to the floor.

  Then he turned and stared at Cody.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The moment Cody beheld the fury in those eyes, he understood for the first time exactly how helpless he was, how futile his resistance had been.

  But still he ran, plunging into the darkness and rushing blindly along the wall behind the heavy velvet curtain. He had thought there might be rooms back here, corridors, but despite the capaciousness of the stage, the area behind it was little more than a narrow passage. Through the caul of terror that had enshrouded his senses, Cody could dimly make out the sounds of running footsteps, the rasping huff of Price’s breathing.

  But it wasn’t only Adam Price who was pursing him, Cody remembered as he made his fumbling way through the murk. It was also Billy Horton and Steve Penders and maybe even Angela for all he knew. She’d never missed a chance to torture him before; why would she forsake the opportunity now? The heavy velvet tremored against his shoulders, one of the vampires bumping against it at a point not too far away. Whimpering, Cody dragged his hands along the back wall, hoping against hope they would reveal to him an escape route. But his fingers only scraped the unsanded wood, his fingernails cracking and splitting in his frenetic search. The curtain undulated against him, the whole damn thing alive now. The vampires were toying with him, he realized. They’d recovered their sense of purpose and had moved past Dragomir’s death. One of them chortled from very close by, the horrid sound amplified by the empty stage.

  Cody gritted his teeth, bunched himself against the wall as he sidled nearer to the far side. They knew he was back here, but he needn’t aid their search by revealing exactly where. The curtain behind him rippled wildly, and suddenly Cody heard the throaty breathing emanating down the black sliver of walkway he was navigating. It sounded like it was coming from the place from which he’d come, but sound was strange back he
re. The vampire could be ahead of him for all he knew, lying in wait and ready to add him to the evening’s list of victims.

  The wall ended and Cody, thinking he’d located a corridor, plunged forward. He slammed into a door, which was inset by only a couple feet. Frantically, he groped for the door handle, found it, but to his horror it wouldn’t turn.

  He realized there was a lock on the handle. Cody twisted the lock, heard the teeth-rattling shriek of scraping iron. He grasped the handle again and tried to turn it, and though the handle moved freely now, the door didn’t budge in the slightest. An anguished humming noise escaped from Cody’s throat as he groped up and down the door’s length, inspecting it for another lock. His fingers happened on a thick board, a four-by-eight, he estimated, judging by the feel of it. Cody probed higher and encountered another. Both boards were nailed into the door and the surrounding frame.

  The vampires had foreseen this, he realized. Of course they had. They’d barred the front door and stationed Angela there to stand sentinel at the windows. Why would they forget to cut off this escape route too? What a damned fool he’d been to think he could simply slip out the back door while they mourned Dragomir.

  Cody staggered away from the door, gripping the .38 in mute terror. His bootheel caught on something and pitched him backward. He grunted and almost lost hold of the gun as he landed on some hard surface. He rolled over, disoriented, and fingered the object curiously.

  Stairs.

  Without pause, Cody clambered up them, realizing at once they must lead to the catwalk where the limelight was operated.

  And if you make it there, then what? an indignant voice demanded. You’re just cutting off your own escape routes.

  What escape routes? he almost said out loud. The growls and raspy breathing below had intensified, the vampires closing in.

  Cody reached a landing, nearly broke his nose bumping against the wall, then turned and scrambled up the next flight of stairs.