What Happens in the Darkness

by Monica J. O'Rourke

  The crowd was with him and roared no.

  “Do you wanna be next?”

  “No!”

  “You wanna be vam’pahr food?” he screamed.

  “No!”

  “I don’t wanna wait ’round just to end up someone’s dinner, man. We gotta stop ’em!”

  The crowd was alive, animated, excited over the prospect of another bloodbath. Only this one not of human blood.

  “Where the hell are they hiding?” a woman yelled.

  All eyes fell on the biker, one of only a few who had survived the carnage.

  He threw his hands up and turned to his friends, who still cowered inside the vehicle. “How the hell should I know? I didn’t see where they went. I didn’t give a shit where they went!”

  “Let’s go find them!” came another voice from the crowd.

  “Find them?” Rudy said. “How do you suggest we do that?”

  “You tell us!” a woman yelled from the crowd.

  All eyes were on Rudy. He kinda liked it.

  A man yelled, “We go back to Yonkers and hunt for ’em.”

  “Okay,” Rudy said, raising his arms in triumph. “Fuck yeah! We hunt them sonsabitches and rip their fuckin’ heads off!”

  The crowd roared again.

  Rudy was enjoying the shit out of this. “We’re gonna need weapons.”

  “Crosses.”

  “Holy water!”

  “Wooden stakes.”

  Rudy nodded, holding out his splayed hands as if addressing a congregation. “They’re too strong at night. We can only kill them in the daytime, while they sleep. We have to find them during the day—before they wake up! First, we need to split into teams to gather supplies.”

  They followed his instructions, and groups formed and disappeared, headed toward churches to collect holy water, or to fashion wooden stakes out of whatever wood they could scrounge. Not many fence slats in New York City, so they raided furniture stores and chopped up dining room sets and sharpened the pieces of wood into stakes.

  An hour later the teams reassembled by the SUV at Times Square, outside what was once the Disney Store and was now a gutted pile of bricks and mortar, broken toys and shredded clothing spilling out of the wreckage.

  A mass of cars and trucks converged, meeting again at Times Square, led by Rudy, who was driving the SUV. He followed the biker on a Harley.

  “Roads cleared?” Rudy yelled to the biker.

  The biker nodded. “They been clearing ’em. And where the roads ain’t clear, you can drive on the shoulder. And with what you’re driving, man—you can plow right over anything in your way.”

  The convoy headed north.

  ***

  Janelle and Thomas stayed behind and watched the proceedings in awe, trying to understand the stupidity of the crowd.

  “You think the vampires will just surrender?” she asked, grinning.

  “Of course. That’s what vampires do.” Thomas smiled back and shrugged. “You think they’ll even find any vampires?”

  They smirked, stuck their tongues out at each other, and giggled. They had an impromptu contest to see who could make the silliest face.

  “Stupid grown-ups,” Thomas said, and they giggled even harder.

  ***

  Rudy led the convoy the fifteen or so miles north to Yonkers, directed by the biker, who had told everyone to call him Hank.

  They reached the Cross County Mall.

  Massacred bodies lay everywhere. Throats ripped out, heads torn nearly off shoulders.

  Considering the size of the crowd piling out of the vehicles, they were surprisingly quiet. A few gasps, moans of shock. Mostly stunned looks.

  “Holy shit,” Rudy muttered.

  Hank clutched Rudy’s arm like a nervous prom date.

  Rudy scanned the area, looking for signs of movement, hoping for a survivor, a hidden witness. Other than the urban tumbleweeds—sheets of newspaper and discarded candy wrappers—pinwheeling and flipping across the parking lot, there was no movement.

  The hundred or so people who had driven so zealously to see the carnage now stood in shock, wishing they had stayed in Manhattan.

  The woman in Rudy’s SUV—who had hours earlier sat nearly comatose in the vehicle—began to shriek and fell to her knees. Reality had slapped her in the face.

  Hank grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to her feet, wrapped his arms around her, pressed her face against his chest.

  “Now what?” he asked Rudy.

  Rudy swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. “I wasn’t expectin’ this,” he murmured. “I had no idea.” The pallor of his skin stood out against his dark clothing.

  “Nobody’s here,” Hank said. “Alive I mean.”

  Rudy nodded. He wanted to say something comforting but was afraid to open his mouth again, afraid that more than words would spill out.

  He took a deep breath. “No. No survivors.” He bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked up again, he said quietly, “We need to get this cleaned up. We have to gather the bodies. Can’t leave ’em like this.”

  “What are we supposed to do with all these bodies?” a woman asked. She had wrapped a scarf around her face.

  “Burn ’em,” Rudy said. “Maybe we’ll find some clues or something while we sort through the … sort through everything.”

  Another woman in the crowd, her arms wrapped firmly around a small boy’s shoulders, asked, “What about those things? What if they come back? What if—”

  Hank cut her off. “Lady, they only come out at night. We’re safe for now.” He looked her and the boy over. “Why the hell would you bring a kid to this mess? There something wrong with you?”

  The woman scowled and turned away.

  A man with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair said, “We came up here to find and kill those things.” He waved a stake and mallet over his head as if in a cheer. “What about that?”

  “We’ll form two teams,” Rudy said, ignoring them all, shouting over the increasingly boisterous crowd. “One group will be clean-up, the other the vampire hunters.”

  “What’s behind curtain number three?” someone yelled, and the crowd laughed.

  “We need all the help we can get,” Rudy said. “But if you’re unwilling or unable to help, we’ll understand.”

  No one left. Their original mission was to hunt and kill the vampires. Nobody changed their mind.

  ***

  Hank supervised the clean-up. Dead bodies were lifted and carefully carried to a pyre constructed in the center of the parking lot. They were stacked pyramid style.

  Two volunteers discovered the body of a young girl who had been so viciously attacked that her head hung from her body by a thin strand of flesh. When they tried to move the child, the thread of skin snapped. Her head hit the ground and smashed her forehead, and it rolled down the incline like a gutter ball. It kept rolling, building momentum, running over its own nose and smashing the cartilage. It finally rested against the curb.

  Both men stood there, the decapitated torso in their hands, gawking at the head as it had rolled away. They dropped her body and chased after the head, then realized they’d both let the body fall and both turned back to retrieve it.

  “Fuck!” one yelled. They both stopped moving, not knowing what the hell to do next.

  “You go get the head,” the one wearing torn jeans said, sweat trickling down his face. “I’ll get the … the rest.”

  “No fucking way, man!” This man was heavier, thicker. On top of his head was a shock of raven-colored hair, and he smelled like tuna fish. “Fuck this. This is sick, okay?”

  “Oh Christ, you big fucking baby. I’ll get the head if you’re gonna be such a pussy.”

  “No, forget it. I’ll get the goddamned thing.” The larger man trotted over to the head and bent over to pick it up. He reached out, pulled away, reached down again, pulled away again. He did this several times. “Jesus,” he said. “How the hell do you pick up a head?” />
  “How the hell should I know? Grab her hair or something.”

  They carried her torso to the stack of bodies. Neither could bring himself to pick up the girl’s head and had gently nudged it into the large drainhole at the corner of the sidewalk, rather alarmed that it didn’t quite fit. Tuna guy had secretly hoped it would have fallen into the sewer system. They covered the head with snow and scattered newspaper.

  “Fellas,” Hank said when they brought the torso to the pyramid, “where’s the head?”

  “Say what?” tuna guy said.

  “She’s missing her head. Where’s her head?”

  “Uh, didn’t see a head. Maybe they took it with them.”

  “I don’t think vampires do that. They’re not Jeffrey Dahmer, for chrissakes, they don’t keep souvenirs. I need you to go back where you found the body and look for her head. Maybe it rolled away. It couldn’t have gotten far.”

  “Yeah, okay,” torn jeans guy said. “But Hank, how would we, um, carry it? I mean, it’s a head.”

  “There’s trash bags in the truck. Use those.”

  ***

  Rudy and his hunters crept from store to store, flashlight beams leading the way, stakes held in shaking hands, mallets and hammers hung from belt loops like sets of keys. They investigated every basement, every stockroom, and every office in the ten dozen stores in the strip mall, including the rather large duplex movie theater.

  No signs of vampires anywhere.

  Three hours after beginning their search, the hunters stayed slumped in the theater lobby. They were exhausted, smelly, and sweaty.

  “Makes sense,” a woman said. She was dressed almost exactly like Rudy, only she had more piercings and more tattoos than he did.

  “What does, Shannon?” Rudy asked.

  “You don’t shit where you eat. They moved on.”

  “Oh yeah? Where then?” someone asked.

  “Could by anywhere. They travel fast. They could be in another state for all we know.”

  “That’s just great,” a man said. “What the fuck did we just do? We just wasted all this time—”

  “No we didn’t,” Rudy said. “We had to be sure. And now we’re sure, right? And this had to be better than handling those dead bodies, right?”

  No one answered. They were too tired, and they didn’t care who had the worse job. As far as they were concerned, both jobs sucked.

  Shortly after, they joined the cleanup crew, abandoning their search, knowing it really had been pointless. Within a few more hours the bodies had been cleared, and the funeral pyre lit. People held hands and prayed for the dead.

  Rudy glanced at his watch. It was already three thirty and would soon be dark. Time to head back to Manhattan, and fast. He was suddenly filled with dread.

  ***

  Patrick was the first to rise, and he stretched his arms above his head.

  He felt wonderful!

  They’d fed well the night before, and the hunt had been remarkable. People running and screaming, terrified, their hot blood boiling like fire in their veins, their muskiness dripping from their pores. It had been glorious. The smells, the tastes. The feel of the skin collapsing as he sank his teeth in, pierced them, ripped away their flesh and blood and life.

  He couldn’t wait to do it again.

  Ah, but they’d have to be careful. Even with a large population, there were limits. Eventually the food source would be diminished. They couldn’t hunt nightly without depleting the stock. So what to do?

  He thought the enemy had been on to something … the humans could be his prisoners, corralled like livestock, used again and again for feedings … and, he thought, considering the idea further, holding humans captive would keep them away from weapons, keep them from retaliating. He and his vampires could build compounds, cities, guarded by—

  Ah, but guarded how? Vampires couldn’t keep watch during the day. He would have to come up with sentries somehow. He’d think of something.

  Patrick loved this idea. This way they would never deplete the stock, and they could still hunt, yet in a contained way. Like hunting on a game reserve. Oh yes, loving this.

  Problem number two was more an annoyance than a problem. Martin. Martin was probably pissed. Patrick had, after all, fucked up his favorite human. And Martin, hot shit that he was, had ordered them not to touch the idiot human. Loyalty to a human! For what? Jeff had done nothing but hurt them and lie to them for years. He got what he deserved. Martin had been unreasonable in his request.

  So then what? Of course Martin wasn’t just going to step aside and give Patrick carte blanche. Which meant Patrick would just have to stop Martin. Make sure he stayed out of the way.

  His vampires stirred, shook the sleep of death from their pale frames.

  Hungry again. Ravenous. So much fun. He would share his plans with them once they gathered. They would be as ecstatic as he was. A human farm. Human zoos. Human hunting ranges.

  He smiled wickedly and shut his eyes; daydreams—or waking nightdreams—led to fantasies of slaughter.

  Chapter 24

  Lana stretched length-wise, catlike, beside Martin, nuzzling his neck, licking his earlobe.

  He opened his eyes, surprised by her affection. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “I felt lonely,” she whispered back.

  “Lonely? Really? Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  She nodded. “Feels good though.”

  “It does.” He debated how to handle this and decided to ignore it for now. “We have to go.” He sat up, and she followed.

  ***

  “Ideas?” Martin had called a meeting with Lana, Dagan, Rebecca, Paula, and Nelson. He hadn’t heard from Luke or Tim in a while and wondered what had happened to them.

  “Spell out our options,” Rebecca suggested.

  “One—we remain here, as home base. Hunt and return here. This won’t work for very long, however. As soon as people discover we’re here, it’ll mean trouble. Two—we stay together and roam the country. Safety in numbers, but feeding will prove to be difficult. Not to mention sleeping. Three—we split up. Establish a life wherever we can. Some will survive, will be able to blend in and act like one of them.

  “That’s how I see it,” Martin said with a grunt, as if dissatisfied with all three options.

  “In my opinion,” Rebecca said, sliding beside Martin on the couch, crossing her long legs and sinking back into the cushions, “we need to have as normal a life as we can. We can’t keep running, unless we have to. I think we need to try to fit in somewhere. I think that means splitting up. There are just too many of us to be inconspicuous as a group.”

  “Good points,” Dagan said, sitting on the arm of the sofa. “But how do ya propose we be inconspicuous?”

  “We’ve done it before,” Martin said.

  “Not all of us.” Paula joined in the conversation. She cleared her throat. “Some of us have no idea how to survive. Where to hide. Who to trust. And the majority of the vampires are new, you know? You four are the only ones with, well, experience at this.”

  Martin nodded but didn’t respond.

  “Weren’t there more of you?” Paula asked. “There were six or seven, right?”

  “Yes, seven,” Martin said. “Lana, what happened to the twins? How long since you’ve heard from them?”

  “I don’t know. A while.”

  “Well Christ, didn’t anyone think to mention this to me?”

  “I thought you knew everything about your vampires, Martin,” she spat. “Why don’t you know where they are?”

  “There are thousands of vampires here, Lana. Thousands. Do you expect me to keep track of every single one?” His face was flushed, almost looking as if he had already fed.

  “Keep track? They’re not new sires, Martin.”

  “They weren’t my sires,” he snapped. “I don’t know where their loyalty lies. For all I know they ran off with Patrick.”

  Don’t get so angry,” she mumbled.
“We’ll find them.”

  “Oh really? How? How do you propose we do that? They could be dead—truly dead—for all we know.”

  “How the hell should I know?” She turned away. “Stop yelling at me!”

  Jeff came out of the caves and joined them in the living room. He walked slowly, almost painfully. His flesh, though as white as the others’, was pasty. His was a death pallor where theirs was a stark white. His complexion was diseased, theirs incandescent.

  “I’m hungry,” Jeff grumbled, carefully lowering himself into the recliner.

  “You just ate,” Martin said.

  Jeff raised his eyebrows. “Is there some sort of restriction? Am I on a diet?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then how about some food?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Easy? Isn’t that what we do? Hunt people? Drink their blood?”

  Martin sighed.

  “Well?”

  “There are too many of us, Jeff.”

  “I don’t care about them,” he said. “I’m hungry. I want to eat. Fuck them! They can get their own food.”

  “And where do you propose we get this food?” Rebecca asked. “We’d have to find hundreds of people. Daily. You know we don’t have to eat every day—so why be greedy?”

  “Have you all gone mad?” Jeff snapped. “When it was time to recruit this army of yours, you had no problem hunting. So what’s the problem now?”

  “There’s no problem,” Martin said. “We could go out and hunt humans. But there are just too many of us right now. Do you understand?”

  “What is this? An attack of conscience? You have gone mad. Let’s just go hunt. We can all go our separate ways.”