Night Blood

by James M. Thompson

  McEntyre and Johnson exchanged glances. McEntyre said, somewhat hesitantly, “Matt, I agree that we don’t have any alternative to offer just now, but that’s no excuse to go off half-cocked . . .”

  Johnson laid his hand on McEntyre’s arm. “Just a minute, George.” He stared off into space for a moment, lost in his thoughts, weighing all the consequences of action versus inaction. Finally, he spoke. “I agree with Matt. He said Dr. O’Reilley had been working with Dr. Niemann, and his article on plasmids specifically mentioned RNA viruses. Besides, if we are wrong, and acyclovir is ineffective against the virus and the chemotherapy does not destroy all of the virus-carrying red blood cells, then we are no worse off than we are at the present moment . . .”

  McEntyre started to interrupt but Johnson stilled him with an upheld hand. “Just a moment, George, let me finish. If, on the other hand, either the acyclovir or the chemotherapy works and helps to eradicate the virus, then we are well on our way to curing Dr. O’Reilley.”

  “But what if she has a reaction to the acyclovir or to the chemotherapy?”

  Matt answered, an edge in his voice, “Then she may die, and we will have killed her a few days early.” He studied the two men before him. “Doctors, we have a decision to make. Do we try to save Dr. O’Reilley and risk killing her, or play it safe and do nothing and let her die?”

  * * *

  The next morning, Matt was discussing the change in TJ’s therapy with Sam, telling her what a difficult time he had convincing the specialists to try it, when the intercom buzzed and the department secretary told her a Mr. Clausen was on the phone.

  “I don’t know any Mr. Clausen. Take a number and I’ll call him back.”

  “He says he works for the Mayflower Moving and Storage company and that he’s got some information you were looking for the other day.”

  Sam looked at Matt and raised her eyebrows. “That’s the man I called to check into the receipt Shooter found in Niemann’s office from the moving company.” She said into the intercom, “Okay, put him through.” As the phone buzzed, she put it on the speaker so they both could listen to the conversation.

  “Mr. Clausen, Dr. Scott here. Do you have that information I called you about?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. Lemme look at this invoice . . . okay, here it is. We moved twenty-seven pieces of furniture and one hundred and thirty-two boxes, that’s two full moving vans, from Seattle, Washington, to Houston, Texas, for Dr. Roger Niemann on the date you gave me.”

  Matt’s breath caught as Sam asked the next question. “Do you have the exact address to which the shipment was delivered?”

  “Shore do.” The man read off the address of the warehouse the police had raided.

  Crushed and disappointed, Sam thanked him and prepared to hang up, thinking they would just have to find another way to trace the vampire’s hideout.

  “Just a minute, don’t ya want the other address?”

  “Other address?” Sam asked.

  “Shore. We put most of the stuff in the first place, but a few boxes were taken to another address.”

  After he gave it to them, Sam and Matt practically ran all the way to TJ’s room, causing quite a few of the hospital employees to fear they had lost their minds. They burst into the room and saw Shooter kissing TJ’s forehead as he prepared to leave.

  “Shooter, we’ve found out where Niemann’s other hideout is!” Matt said.

  The weariness and depression seemed to lift from Shooter’s face, to be replaced by a naked eagerness for revenge. “Where?”

  “It seems that the moving company delivered part of his belongings to a freighter named the Nightrunner.”

  Shooter wrinkled his forehead. “The Nightrunner. Where have I seen that name before?”

  Matt smiled. “Right down the street from the warehouse where Sherry found TJ. It’s only about a half block down the wharf. I wouldn’t be surprised if the son of a bitch isn’t on that boat right now!”

  Shooter started for the door. “I hope so, Matt. I hope so.”

  Matt grabbed him by the arm. “Wait a minute, Shooter.”

  “What is it? I’ve got to get word to the chief and go after that bastard.”

  “I want to go.”

  Shooter looked stunned. “What? No way, Matt! Clark would never okay it.”

  Matt began to pull him toward the door. “You don’t have a choice, Shooter. I found the address, and I want to be in on the kill!”

  Sam grabbed Matt’s shoulder and whirled him around. “Just a goddamned minute, Matt Carter!” She stood there, hands on hips, and glared at him for a moment, then looked over at Shooter. “Would you excuse us for a minute, Shooter?”

  After he left the room, Sam moved up until her body was against Matt’s. She placed her hands on each side of his face and looked deep into his eyes. “Matt, I don’t want you to go. Leave it to the police. It’s their job.”

  Matt glanced at TJ, lying pale and emaciated on the bed. Taking a deep breath, he leaned over and kissed Sam softly on the lips. “Babe, this is something I have to do. I can’t leave it for someone else to finish.”

  “What if I asked you not to go . . . for me?”

  He sighed. “Then I wouldn’t go. But, I don’t think I’d ever forget, or forgive myself if he got away and someone else was killed.”

  She buried her head in his chest and squeezed him until he could barely breathe. “Then go, Matt, go. But if you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you, you hear?”

  Forty-three

  I spent most of the night packing, getting ready to leave Houston since my cover was blown. As I put what few belongings I planned to take with me in my valise, I pulled out my journal and sat down for a last read of the history of my “life,” so to speak.

  Halfway through, I began to realize something. In over two hundred years, I hadn’t really made much of a difference in the world in which I lived. Other than the deaths of over five thousand or so individuals, I had accomplished nothing.

  Oh, I’d fought with Grant in the Civil War, alongside Pershing in the First World War and MacArthur in the second, and had a few remarkable adventures in foreign lands in between, but looking back on what I’d written, it seemed markedly little for the opportunity I’d been given.

  Feeling depressed and discouraged, I put my journal down and walked to the rail overlooking the ship channel. As I breathed in deep lungfuls of the salty air, staring at stars overhead that I’d seen move through their entire course over the years, I felt useless and unimportant in the grander scheme of things.

  It was time to take stock of my life, such as it was. Was I just marking time, staying alive for no other reason than that it was easier than the alternative? Why did I bother? Certainly the prospect of another two or three hundred years living alone, never feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, never sharing golden moments with someone who cared whether I lived or died, never feeling love or devotion, didn’t seem all that important to me now.

  I realized I was at a crossroads in my existence. For the first time in a long while, I had some choices to make. I could pack my mementos and run away to another city, set up a new base, and continue as I had, alone and lonely and disgusted with the Hunger that ruled my life as surely as a cancer; or, I could stay where I was, hoping against hope that Tabitha would escape and come home to find me, to share with me the gift we’d been given of almost eternal life, with all the time in the world to get to know each other, to fall in love, to live as God must have intended us to live when he made us.

  It was no choice at all. I walked back into my study, picked up the journal, and threw it into the wood-burning stove in the galley. As I struck a match to what had been my life, I resolved never again to take a human life to satisfy the Hunger. I would wait for Tabitha, and if the love I felt for her brought her back to me, we would live only for each other, striving in our mutual quest to end the nightmare the gift of the Vampyri had brought us, to cure the disease that made us need
to kill in order to survive.

  If she didn’t come—if instead the authorities found my lair—then I would die knowing that God had so willed it. Shuffling off the mortal coil would have to be better than living in constant and unrelenting self-hate and depredation.

  I found I was no longer depressed. Even if I was to die that day, that one glorious last moment, when I would become a man in God’s image again, that final instant of humanness before my ancient flesh melted away, would be worth everything!

  Forty-four

  The fog and drizzle that had been present all morning turned into a light rain by the time the ten men on the SWAT team, led by Damon Clark and Shooter, deployed around the Nightrunner. Chief Clark arranged for a small Coast Guard cruiser to be in the channel to prevent any attempted escape via water.

  The gangplank was in an upright position, so there was no easy access to the ship. Damon spoke briefly on the radio to two members of the SWAT team, giving them orders to shimmy across the large ropes tying the ship to the dock. Matt watched through the misty rain as they threw their M-16s over their shoulders and began to go hand over hand, hanging upside down, along the ropes toward the ship.

  He shuddered at the sight of the men scrambling over the water, only feet above the slow-moving, oily black liquid. It brought back terrible memories of when he’d been only five or six years old. His father had taken him out to Lake Houston for a weekend fishing trip. Matt walked out on a small pier while his dad was unloading the car. A rotten board had given way, flinging Matt into the deep, brown water of the lake. He’d become entangled in lake grass and was held underwater, choking and coughing and inhaling the dirty water until, at the last moment, his father had pulled him out. Matt had been terrified of drowning ever since, and only rarely ventured anywhere near water. He knew it was going to take all the courage he could muster to walk onto that ship.

  Once on board, the SWAT team hurried to the gangplank and started the winch that would lower it to the dock.

  Damon glanced at Matt, standing next to him in the rain. “Matt, my butt is really on the line letting you be here.”

  “I know, Chief, and I’m grateful. . . .”

  Damon put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Okay, prove it by staying here.... No matter what happens, I don’t want you anywhere near that ship. Okay?”

  Matt started to answer, secretly relieved at being absolved of the need to go on board, when suddenly, with the gangplank only halfway down, a figure in black appeared behind the men on the ship. Intent on the progress of the gangplank, they failed to see him until he was directly behind them. One of the men on shore with Damon yelled at them and they whirled, rifles coming up.

  They were too late. The figure had a long, metallic object in his hand and made two lightning-fast swings, one forehand, the other backhand. The SWAT men stood there for a moment, as if confused; then their heads simply rolled off their shoulders over the rail into the water as their bodies collapsed onto the deck.

  Ten guns fired at once, but all were too late, for the figure had ducked out of sight behind the gangplank winch. Damon, by dint of much yelling and a slap or two, finally got the men to quit firing their weapons at shadows.

  As the gangplank hit the dock, Damon was first in line as the men rushed the ship. At the head of the gangplank, he divided the men into teams, warning them again to proceed with extreme caution.

  Damon and two of his men were searching the bridge when they heard screams from the rear of the vessel. They rushed out onto the deck in time to hear a prolonged burst from an M-16 punctuated by a snarling howl and another scream. Straining to see through the driving rain, Damon thought he saw a man’s form fly through the air and over the side of the ship.

  A figure came running out of the mist and ran toward them, and the two men with Damon cut loose with their M-16s before he could stop them. The SWAT man they were aiming at danced and jigged as the bullets tore into and through him, then fell to the deck in a spreading pool of crimson blood.

  One of the men with Damon, when he saw what he had done, leaned over the rail and began to vomit, muttering over and over, “Oh my God, oh my God.” Damon shouted at the other man to stay with him as he made his way toward the screams.

  The rain streamed off Damon’s face and into his eyes, spotting his glasses, but he didn’t dare take his hands off his rifle to wipe them clear. He advanced slowly, crouching as he was taught in the marines. His eyes darted to and fro, never still, using his peripheral as well as his central vision to the maximum.

  Damon sensed rather than heard the swish of the sword and dove to the side, swinging his rifle up to ward off the blow. His heart almost stopped at the sight that confronted him as the glittering blade glanced off his M-16 with a shower of sparks. There, outlined by a flash of lightning, was a creature nightmares are made of. Its skull was misshapen and elongated from front to back, with wide, flaring nostrils, pointed ears, and a long pointed tongue that flicked in and out from between protruding fangs, glowing in the dark.

  The rain had not yet erased the streaks of blood and gore dripping from the creature’s mouth and claws. Damon screamed in fear and loathing as he fired point-blank into the monster’s chest.

  He had time to see the bullets’ impact knock the creature backward and tear holes in its chest before his clip was empty. He snapped the clip release with one hand while he reached for his spare clip with the other, never taking his eyes off the creature.

  With a deep guttural growl, the creature regained its balance and lunged forward, burying its sword to the hilt in Damon’s abdomen. The end of the blade passed clear through him and came out his back. Damon’s hands, paralyzed by the shock of the wound, dropped his rifle and he hung there, impaled on the sword. The creature howled and swiftly withdrew the sword, letting Damon fall to his knees before him.

  As the creature raised the blade above him with both hands for the coup de grâce, Damon somehow managed to wrench his pistol out of his shoulder holster. With a scream of rage and pain, he raised the pistol and shot the creature full in the face, pulling the trigger over and over again until the gun was empty. The force of the impact flipped the ghoul over backward and it tumbled down the deck behind a pile of boxes. After a moment, surrounded by a hail of bullets from one of the other SWAT team members, it reappeared and scrambled down the passageway out of sight.

  Damon tried to staunch the flow of blood with his hands as he thought, Well I’ll be damned, I’m still alive. Then a cloud of darkness appeared out of the rain and enveloped him as he fell facedown on the deck.

  Matt, hands shielding his eyes from the rain, saw the whole scene played out against the backdrop of the lightning flashes. Oh God, he thought in horror. He’s got Damon. Ignoring his fear of water and without regard for his own safety, he rushed up the gangplank and onto the ship.

  Shooter and his partner were down in the forward cabin area searching for Niemann, when they heard the gunfire and screams from above. As they raced back up the passageway, Shooter ratcheted back the bolt of the Uzi he’d checked out of the police armory. He preferred it to the M-16 because of its thirty-round magazine and heavier parabellum shells.

  Shooter’s partner scrambled up the steps to the main deck just ahead of him. Suddenly his full weight was thrown back on Shooter, knocking him back to the floor. He rolled to the side and jumped to his feet, covering the steps with his Uzi. When he saw there was no immediate danger, he looked back down at his partner. The man was split down the middle, from the crown of his head to his midchest. He never even felt the blow that killed him.

  Bile rising in his throat at the sight, Shooter inched up the steps, swinging the Uzi to and fro to cover his ascent. He climbed up on deck into the rain, unable to see more than a few feet in front of him. He fished a flashlight out of his rear pocket, but the glare off the rain and fog made the visibility even worse, so he switched it off.

  Crouching, he began to make his way toward the rear of the ship, the direction fr
om which the screams and gunshots came. Before he had gone ten feet, he stumbled over something in the passageway and fell to the deck. He rolled and swung the Uzi around, sure he was about to be attacked. Nothing. He felt around in the darkness until he found what tripped him. It was the body of one of the SWAT team members, with pulp where his face should have been and a gaping hole in his throat.

  Shooter began to shiver. He tried to tell himself it was from the rain and cold, not from fear, but didn’t believe it for a minute. C’mon, Shooter, get a grip on yourself, he said to himself. He looked around in the gloom and realized he would not see anything even if it was there. Why didn’t we bring more backup? He crawled around until his back was against the wheelhouse wall and held the Uzi out in front of him, pointing at the darkness and mist and fog.

  After a few moments, he decided to continue moving around. Hell, it can’t be any more dangerous than sitting here waiting for him to find me, he reasoned, trying to gain control over the terror that threatened to immobilize him. Half crawling and half walking, he found three more bodies as he circled the ship. With the two overboard, that made seven dead out of their original twelve, he counted. God only knows what Clark and the others ran into out there.

  Shooter continued around the rail, continually looking ahead and behind, until he thought his neck was going to seize up from the strain. He held his breath and felt a pain in his chest. There was Damon lying on the deck a few feet ahead with a figure bending over him. Shooter raised the Uzi, about to fire. When the figure looked back over his shoulder, he saw that it was Matt.

  He rushed over and knelt next to the two men. “Jesus, Matt, what’re you doing up here?”

  Matt was stuffing parts of Damon’s shirt he had torn off into the wound to staunch the flow of blood. Shooter gasped at the amount of blood on the front of Damon’s abdomen. It had soaked his coat and pooled beneath his body.