by Brian Rowe
More applause. More cheers.
The idiotic vamp shouted, “Yum-yum! Yum-yum!”
“Agreed!” Droz shouted. “Yummy, yummy, yummy!”
As the brightly lit exhibition of fools continued on the right of the stage, the center with all the humans was still black as night. Droz would apparently not reveal the four vulnerable victims until the last possible second, and good for Brin and Paul; this use of cheesy showmanship was allowing them to conquer their plan.
Brin cut through the fourth rope. She turned to the left. Paul had already cut Dylan completely loose; now he was kneeling behind the second chair and working through Lavender’s ropes.
“Next!” Droz screamed into the microphone. “Michael and Mickey!”
The two vampires standing behind Chace made their way past the blackness and over to the harsh light hitting Droz and the other four vampires in waiting. Brin couldn’t believe her eyes: it was so dark around her that they couldn’t see what she and Paul were doing.
Brin struggled with the last rope—it was the stiffest, most problematic of the five—but she finally cut Anaya free.
She turned to her left. Dylan, while no longer tied up, was still hunched over and not moving. When Brin looked forward to see the freed Anaya slump over, not in any way wanting to flee from the large herd of bloodthirsty fiends, Brin realized this rescue mission was going to get a lot more difficult before it got easy.
They can’t get up, Brin thought. They’re sedated. They’re completely out of it. What if I can’t wake them out of their daze? What if there’s nothing Paul and I can do?
She couldn’t worry any longer. When Droz shoved the microphone up to the next two vampires, she knew that time was almost out.
Brin crawled to her left and started working on Chace’s ropes. He had seven instead of five. As she cut through the first strand and started working on the second, she realized it was going to be near impossible to finish freeing the pretty boy in time.
“Mickey… good old Mickey…” Droz said. “What’s your human’s name?”
“Chace! He’s tall! And he’s young, too!” The cheers grew beyond comprehension when Mickey screamed into the microphone, “They’re all young!”
Brin cut through the second strand. She moved to the third.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Come on, come on.”
“OK!” Droz shouted as the four vampires to the right of him became six. He turned to the audience. “What do you all think? Do you think we have any more humans up here?”
“Yes!” the audience screamed.
“Do you want to see what they look like?”
“Yes!”
Brin cut through the third strand. Her hands were bleeding. She hurt but she pushed on. She wasn’t about to give up now.
Droz turned to his left. “Let’s bring the last two helpers up. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a brand new addition to our clan, Brin, and… everyone, please give a warm welcome to my very own flesh… and blood… my son Paul has returned!”
The crowd didn’t erupt with cheers. A rare display of mere polite clapping followed.
She struggled with the fourth strand. Chace’s ropes were taking longer than expected.
“You got it?” Paul whispered.
Brin looked to her left. Dylan and Lavender were both freed. Dylan was still barely moving, while Lavender was shaking and looking like she might vomit.
Brin cut through the fourth strand. Three more to go.
“Go,” she said to Paul.
“Uhh… Paul and Brin?” Droz said. The little applause there was died down. For the first time in minutes, an awkward silence fell over the auditorium.
“Hurry, Brin,” Paul whispered as he passed Brin and Anaya and walked confidently over to his father.
When the sound of his footsteps echoed through the ominously quiet auditorium, the clapping picked back up again, and Droz sported a relieved smile.
“There he is,” he said, turning from his son to the audience. “As many of you know, Paul and I have had our differences over the years… but tonight… here and now… we begin again!”
The fifth strand was cut.
“Who’s ready to feast!” Droz shouted.
Not one single vampire in the auditorium was sitting now. They all shot up to their feet, hugging, kissing, jumping, leaping, dancing, even caroling. They were ready.
“Those of you whose number I called, please start making your way down to the stage!”
Fourteen vampires from all sides of the auditorium started racing toward the center stage.
Brin cut through the sixth strand.
Droz brought the microphone down and said to Paul, “Where’s the girl?”
Paul looked deep into his father’s eyes and smiled big. “She’s making an ass out of you, Dad.”
The overhead lights to the stage turned on, revealing Brin’s final flick of her knife, successfully freeing Chace from his chair. He gurgled something inaudible and fell forward to the ground. Anaya was trying to stand up, while Lavender and Dylan were both by now on their feet.
Droz’s mouth dropped open. The fourteen vampires racing toward the stage all stopped. The auditorium went deathly quiet.
And the roar of indignation began to brew.
Droz stared at his son, his eyes emanating a fierce black. “You better run,” he said, his legs trembling, his twelve fingers crackling, a ferocious scowl forming on his angry face. “You better run as fast as you can.”
Brin kicked the chair out of the way and pulled Chace up to his feet, before turning toward the hundreds of vampires in the audience and seeing so many blinding red lights that she thought she’d go blind.
The red glow, Brin thought. It’s coming out of every one of them.
Droz leapt forward and grabbed for Paul’s neck, but Paul jumped into the air even higher and landed next to Brin.
“You get Dylan and Lavender!” Paul shouted. “I’ve got the other two!”
All of the vampires, the big and the small, the young and the old, the mad and the crazed, raced toward the center stage.
“Where do we go?”
“The way we came!” Paul shouted. “Hurry!”
Brin didn’t know if she could remember every twist and turn they had taken on the journey here. But she knew she had to try.
As the first of the vampires leapt toward the stage, Brin turned to her left, grabbed Dylan and Lavender by the shoulders, and started to run.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Paul stayed close behind, tugging Chace and the slow, portly Anaya with all his might, as Brin pushed through the double doors of the rehearsal area and started winding her way through the thin corridors underneath the Underground.
“Come on, guys,” Brin said. “You have to move faster.”
Lavender was almost back to normal, but Dylan was still dragging behind, still acting like he wanted to go back to his chair and fall asleep. Brin wouldn’t allow it; she hadn’t come this far to let that happen.
She turned left, and then made another left, and thought, for a moment, she had made a wrong turn.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. She hadn’t heard any vampire activity since she charged through the doors, but now she could hear a rumble of footsteps and a chorus of screaming, and it was coming not from behind, but from the front.
“Crap,” Brin said.
She had stopped, only for a second, when she heard another stampede of vampires, this one coming from behind.
“Over here!” Paul shouted from across the way. He was still tugging the sleepy Anaya, but Chace was now running on his own. “Brin, over here!”
“You saved us,” Lavender said softly, as she yanked herself away from Brin and started running on her own. “I can’t believe you saved us!”
“Now’s not the time,” Brin said, grabbing hold of Dylan. “Let’s go!”
The vampires were ten seconds behind them, maybe even five. Brin raced as fast as she could toward Paul, wh
o was on the right track, headed to that small opening in the cement wall.
When Brin and the others reached the space, Paul was already pushing Chace inside.
“He’s in!” Paul shouted. “Who’s next?”
“I’m goin!” Lavender said. She was so freakishly thin that she was able to push herself inside faster than what seemed humanly possible.
Brin turned around. She could see a horde of vampires racing toward them.
“Shit!” Brin shouted. “They’re coming! Dylan! Hurry!”
Paul took one foot and Brin took the other, hoisting Dylan into the air and toward the opening in the wall. Paul pushed him hard and Brin pushed him harder, and in under the wall he went.
“OK!” Paul said. “Now you, Brin!”
“What about you?”
“No time! Let’s go!”
Brin looked to her left to see dozens of agitated vamps rushing toward them. She turned to her right to see Anaya, still lethargic, leaning up against the wall with a glazed look in her eye.
She won’t fit, Brin thought. There’s no way.
“Move!” Paul shouted. “Now!”
He kneeled down and pushed Brin up toward the wall opening. She struggled, like the time before, to scoot her way in, but she managed.
She was halfway in when Paul said, “OK, I have to go!”
“Go?” Brin shouted. “Where?”
The vampires were five seconds away, four seconds away.
“Do you have it? Can you get in?”
“I’m fine! Where are you going?”
“There’s another way out. I’ll take Anaya there.”
Three seconds. Two seconds.
“No! But… wait!”
“Goodbye,” Paul said as he grabbed Anaya and started dragging her up the stairs and out of sight.
One second.
Brin pushed herself through the slit and turned over on her stomach, ready to kick her feet up and start running down the hall toward Paul’s little shack. She heard the vampires crashing against the wall behind her, all wanting to rip her from end to end.
She brought her left foot up.
She couldn’t bring her right foot up.
Her right foot was stuck.
No. Oh no, no, no.
Before she could scream, a vampire grabbed her foot and started pulling her back through the opening.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Nooooo!” Brin screamed.
A set of sharp, elongated fingernails dug their way into her right ankle, and she could feel the warm breath of a dozen vampires wafting against it. Brin shook her feet up and down, sideways and around, but she couldn’t stop herself. The creatures pulled her back.
In seconds she’d be landing in a pit of blood-thirsty vampires.
“Nooooo!” she shouted again. “Stop—”
It was over. She was a goner.
But then: “We got you!” Dylan screamed as he grabbed Brin’s hands and started pulling her back inside the secret passageway. Lavender returned as well and grabbed Brin’s left arm and helped Dylan pull her back.
It was a tug-of-war like no other.
“Pull!” Dylan shouted. “Pull! Harder!”
“Pleeeeeease!” Brin shouted. She could feel teeth sliding against her ankle. “Hurry! They’re gonna bite me!”
Lavender leaned forward, stuck her foot out, and kicked a cloud of dirt past Brin’s ankle. It seemed a terrible idea, but the vamp closest to Brin coughed and fell back down against the bloodsuckers.
“Pull!” Dylan and Lavender screamed at the same time as Brin and her right foot—shoe and all—came swooping inside the passageway. She crashed against the ground, as did Dylan and Lavender.
Brin rolled over on her back and peered forward to see at least ten pale hands reaching through the opening.
“Oh my God,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “You saved me. You two saved me. If you hadn’t come back—”
“Just returning the favor,” Dylan said. “Come on! We’ve gotta get outta here!”
Lavender screamed as one of the vampires from below jumped toward the opening. The vampires below pushed him forward, and he started crawling through.
“You’re not gonna make it out alive!” he screamed.
The three humans ran at top speeds toward Paul’s shack, Brin the fastest one of all. They spun to the left, then to the right, then up a small corridor, then down another one. It was pitch black inside so Brin was running on instinct, allowing Dylan and Lavender to follow close behind. She slammed her chest into a wall, twice, before she finally spotted a light at the top of a thin hallway.
“There!” Brin screamed. “Over there! Follow m—”
“AAAHHH!” a group of vampires screamed from behind Lavender.
“Oh shit!” Lavender screamed. “They’re coming!”
“Oh my God!” Brin shouted. “Hurry!”
One vampire from behind was charging so fast that his hands brushed against the back of Dylan’s sweatshirt.
“Run!” Brin screamed. “We’re almost there!”
Brin saw the opening to Paul’s shack. She forgot to breathe. She forgot to think. She just barreled toward the entrance with every ounce of her being.
She jumped past the door and stopped to turn around. Lavender leapt through the entryway a second later, but Dylan was lagging behind.
“Dylan!” Brin shouted. “Come on!”
A vampire had a grasp on Dylan’s arm, but Dylan pulled away and even took a second to hock a loogie at the vampire’s horrid face.
He ran inside and Brin tried to push the metallic door shut.
But before it would close all the way, a courageous vamp gripped the side of the entryway. Brin tried to shove the door closed, but the vampire’s hands blocked it.
“Lavender! Dylan! Help me!”
The other two came to Brin’s rescue and started pushing against the two hands. But this vampire was strong; he wasn’t giving up.
“Push!” Brin shouted. She could feel pellets of sweat dripping down her forehead. “Push! For God’s sake!”
“Come on!” Dylan screamed. “Let’s push at the same time! Ready? One! Two!”
“THREE!” The trio shouted as they slammed the door shut with one mighty push, severing the hands from the vampire’s body.
Brin locked the door and jumped back.
“Ewww!” Lavender said, staring down at the hands.
“Come on!” Brin said, trying to ignore the ugly site of amputated body parts, as well as the loud banging from all the vampires behind the door. She looked up to see the exit to Paul’s home. “We have to climb up.”
Brin stayed behind and waited for Dylan and Lavender to climb to the top and reach the front door. Then, when the banging behind her went silent, signaling to her that the vampires were headed back the other direction to find a different way to the top, Brin leapt up to the top floor of Paul’s shack and crawled toward the front door.
“Do we just go?” Lavender said.
“Do you think they’re out there?” Dylan added.
“We don’t have a choice,” Brin said, resting her hand on the wooden doorknob. “It’s now or never. Let’s go!”
Brin opened the door and the trio rushed out into the early morning sunlight.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brin was thankful that the sun had appeared over the horizon, bringing light to what would have otherwise been a blind run through a black city. The trio raced at top speeds toward the center of Bodie Ghost Town, looking desperately for the road that led to the freeway sixteen miles out. They ran past the brown van, now black and completely destroyed, then the jailhouse, then all the archaic homes.
“Come on, guys,” Brin said, “I see the road up ahead.”
“What about Anaya?” Dylan said.
“I don’t…” Brin didn’t know what to say. “Paul’s with her… she’ll be safe…”
“Who’s Paul?” Dylan said.
Lavender wasn’t p
art of the conversation. She stopped left of the church. Brin and Dylan turned to look at the girl, who had a pasty white look on her face, suggesting for a second that she had turned into one of them.
“Lavender?” Brin said.
Lavender’s eyes grew wide. She leaned forward, appearing like she might faint.
“We have to keep moving, Lavender! We have to—”
“Oh my God, look!” Lavender shouted.
Dylan and Brin peered forward, past the church.
Chace was sprawled out on the ground, his hands outstretched. Six vampires held him down; two more had their fangs sunk deep into his neck. Chace let out a loud, sorrowful scream, the kind that signified defeat.
“We have to help him!” Lavender screamed. “We can’t just stand here!”
She took a leap forward, but Brin stuck her arm out. “No. It’s too late… it’s too late…”
“We have to—”
“No!” Brin shouted. “There’s nothing we can do for him!”
The loud rustle of footsteps from behind made Dylan, Lavender, and Brin turn around. A horde of bloodthirsty creatures raced toward them. There weren’t just a few; there were over fifty. Their eyes were on fire with an orange red that illuminated all of Bodie.
“This is not good,” Brin said. “OK, come on guys! We have to run!”
Lavender was sobbing. “Where? There’s nowhere to go!”
Brin tried to run to the left, but five more vampires appeared from behind the farmhouse. She turned to her right to see another half dozen coming toward them.
The trio was surrounded.
“No, no, no, no,” Dylan said.
“Oh my God!” Lavender screamed. “We’re trapped!”
Brin stepped in front of Dylan and Lavender and put her arms out, trying her best to act like a human shield.
The vampires formed a circle, making an exit for the trio impossible. The creatures grinned for a moment, before they started marching toward the terrified humans.
Brin closed her eyes.
And waited to die.
Chapter Forty
The ugly vampire faces all blended into one another, until about fifty or so became one giant repulsive visage that rivaled that of the Wicked Witch of the West.