The Triumph of Death

by Jason Henderson

  Alex jumped for the go package and grabbed it, crouching against the bulkhead. In an instant he was scrounging through the bag and found what he was looking for—an eighteen-inch, narrow, crossbow-like weapon, completely encased in heavy composite plastic and loaded with a cartridge of silver-threaded hawthorn wood bolts. A Polibow.

  Alex heard a gasp farther back, in the galley, and looked beyond Hansen’s body. The vampire dressed as the pilot had not killed the steward after all—he was hauling him forward, his arm wrapped around the steward’s neck and shoulders.

  “You!” the vampire in the pilot uniform called, pointing at Alex. The steward came under his own power, his legs moving rapidly to keep up with the muscular vampire.

  Alex didn’t waste any time with the Polibow. He reached in and grabbed a glass grenade, feeling the slosh of holy water inside, and threw it. The glass ball landed perfectly, with a heavy crunch, smacking the vampire on the head. It knocked his cap off as water flew in tinkles of glass, making the vampire’s flesh sizzle. The vampire bared his teeth, but he didn’t drop the steward.

  “No, no.” The vampire shook his head. His hair was sizzling, his flesh seeming to boil for a moment. He stuck a claw to the steward’s neck, a long thumbnail digging in just below the crook of the thin man’s jaw. The steward’s eyes widened with terror behind his glasses. “We regret that there has been some turbulence, but if you’ll just comply with the requests of the flight personnel you should soon be on your way.” The pilot had an accent. Central American, Alex guessed, so that all his yous and yours came out ju and jorr.

  Alex’s static was roaring in his mind, and he realized the other vampire in the cockpit could be on him in a second, so he slammed back against the wall, his hand on the go package. He could reach for the Polibow. Could he hit the vampire and not the steward? Would the bolt hit faster than the vampire could move out of the way, or tear out the steward’s throat?

  “What do you want?” Alex asked.

  “That’s the spirit,” the vampire said, flicking his head toward the computer in the bulkhead. “I need you to remove that tablet computer.”

  Alex moved a few inches along the wall until he was across from his seat and the bulkhead, so he could see the screen. It was still displaying the spinning image of the stikini.

  The computer was a Polidorium tablet set into a wall cradle; it would pop in and out as needed. Except that Alex had no idea how to pop the tablet out.

  “It’s a terminal, a practice computer. It doesn’t have anything on it,” Alex said.

  “Are you planning on just making things up or are you going to remove it for me?” the vampire growled, drawing a speck of blood from the steward’s neck.

  Alex had no idea what was on the computer. As far as he was concerned it contained nothing but the training program. But it didn’t matter now anyway.

  “Okay.” He edged toward the computer and stared at it.

  “Hurry!” hissed the vampire.

  “Okay!”

  Alex studied the screen, which was embedded in a plastic frame in the bulkhead. He saw no obvious levers or buttons for dislodging it. “I may need a knife.”

  “You will not need a knife, I know that much,” the vampire answered.

  “If you know so much, why don’t you get it?”

  “Please!” the steward cried.

  “Okay,” Alex snapped. He tapped at the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. The words END SESSION? appeared. YES NO.

  Yes.

  “Ticktock!”

  The steward howled again as the vampire dragged him forward so that Alex could see the thin trickle of blood trailing down his neck.

  Alex turned back to the screen. The smell of bananas suddenly came to his nose, drifting strangely in and away. A bizarre, momentary olfactory hallucination. Stress and hunger. Alex shook his head to refocus.

  A menu system appeared before him below the Polidorium logo.

  He saw a button. EJECT DEVICE.

  Alex tapped the button and the device popped forward and out, the ten-inch Plexiglas tablet going dark as it came away from its cradle in the wall. He caught it and stood, turning to the vampire and the steward.

  The steward looked glassy-eyed and afraid.

  The banana smell came to Alex again.

  “Give it here!” the vampire demanded, holding out his free hand. “Bjurman! We can go!”

  The second vampire emerged instantly from the cockpit.

  Alex felt his eyes tracking the trickle of the steward’s blood. It was blackish and strange, and the smell of bananas was stronger.

  Alex still held the device and looked at the steward. “So where are you from?”

  “Please…”

  They were wearing pilots’ uniforms. Alex had seen the pilots when he’d boarded, and though he hadn’t gotten a good look at them, they hadn’t been vampires then. So they had stolen the uniforms and taken the pilots’ places during the layover. But they needed someone to hold hostage aboard a plane of agents. Even a steward couldn’t be trusted to be compliant.

  “What’s your name?” Alex asked the steward.

  “Give me the device!” ordered the pilot.

  “I…,” said the steward.

  Bananas. That meant something. Then he thought, Filipino. A Filipino illusion, and a very unusual one.

  “What’s two plus two?”

  “Please…”

  “You can’t do math, can you? Just a couple lines of dialogue, that’s all you can handle.” Alex drew the Polibow from his belt and pointed it at all of them, backing toward the bulkhead. “Get back in the cockpit and fly the plane.”

  “Hand it over,” said the vampire, “or this man dies.”

  “I don’t think so.” Alex fired the Polibow.

  The Aswang vampires of the Philippines could replace people with simple doppelgangers. These doppelgangers were zombie-like in nature and didn’t last long.

  And they were made of banana leaves.

  Of course an Aswang didn’t look like banana leaves—the glamour that transformed them smoothed over the vegetable matter and gave them the appearance of normal, if sallow, human beings. But there was no disguising the smell and the beginnings of rot.

  The bolt struck the steward in the chest and the steward’s eyes burst like banana-filled tomatoes, his body disintegrating into leaves and sweet-smelling mush. Alex fired at the pilot vampire as the steward fell apart, but the vampire pushed the falling mass toward Alex. Alex missed.

  The copilot yanked on the emergency exit—something Alex wasn’t expecting—and suddenly wind and papers and the last vestiges of the banana leaf man were flying out the door. Alex drew his Polibow again and the vampire smacked him across the face, sending him flying back.

  Alex could now barely hear over the roar of wind. He watched Gunnar Hansen’s body lift with the sudden bucking of the plane and smash to the floor.

  Alex felt the plane begin to pitch slightly and then steady, fighting to stay on course. Obviously the autopilot was functioning, or else the plane would surely be diving toward the earth. But as the plane jolted, the tablet computer slipped from his hand, bouncing off the bulkhead near the vampire. About thirty oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.

  As Alex steadied himself against a seat, he saw the pilot had already picked up the computer and attached it to a cord that ran to an iPod-like device on his belt. The pilot vampire studied the connection between the two devices for a second, watching a few lights blinking on his own device. Then, as the blinking slowed, he nodded and tossed the Polidorium tablet aside. “Okay.”

  The copilot nodded in agreement, removing his jacket to reveal a parachute attached to his shoulders. He snapped the clasps across his chest and disappeared through the door without another signal.

  “Gracias, amigo!” called the pilot, and he bounded past Alex in a blur. The vampire stopped at the door, looking back. “I’ve heard you are always prepared. I’ll bet you weren’t prepared for this!” Wi
th that, the vampire leapt out the door.

  Alex ran after the vampire and stopped, holding on. He paused for a moment and stared across the entire plane.

  Just him and the late Hansen, who absolutely had not expected his last act to be that of searching for a granola bar.

  Could he fly the plane?

  You can’t fly a plane.

  And then something in the cockpit burst with orange and red, and Alex saw flames rising with the smell of burning plastic and black smoke.

  Okay. Okay, now you’re in trouble.

  Chest flooding. That’s panic. Ask the questions.

  In microseconds, questions shot across Alex’s mind like ricocheting bullets.

  What’s going on?

  I’m alone at 30,000 feet. The cockpit has been destroyed. The door is open.

  What do you need to get down?

  A parachute.

  Do you have one?

  No.

  Is there one nearby?

  Alex saw a small door clasped shut near the cockpit. He tore it open, hoping to find a parachute. No such luck.

  Who has one?

  No time. The smell of smoke was getting thicker. He looked around for something to protect his eyes from the wind and saw his motorcycle helmet rolling against the bulkhead. He slapped it on his head and slipped his arms through the straps of the go package. He was out of time.

  He drew near to the door, looked out, took a deep breath, and leapt.

  Alex flipped once in the wind, totally losing control. For a moment he was thankful that he could barely see the ground—just a distant line of tiny lights dotting the landscape like LEDs on a model train set. He could see a train, in fact, far below, a long stream of bright yellow lights pulsing out of the sides of the cars.

  He spotted the first vampire farther below, finally, his parachute shimmering in the darkness, barely visible—a brilliant red vinyl canopy.

  This is crazy. You’re going to die shot through his head and he shut it down. Breathe. This is your only chance.

  He was falling. Without a parachute. He scanned the air some more, Find it find it, and spotted the second vampire. Both seemed about a quarter mile or more away, not far from one another. I pick that one. Alex tilted forward, bringing his arms close to his sides, and began to dive.

  The wind smashed against his Plexiglas wind visor and roared, rolling the skin of his face back toward his ears. The vampire he’d chosen seemed to be banking a little, slower than the other, and Alex aimed for him.

  Within a hundred yards Alex began to worry. If he struck the parachute he would wrap himself up and fall to the earth in a cloth cocoon. If he struck the vampire’s body with his head, he was pretty sure his neck would break.

  He thought about flipping again and striking the vampire with his feet, but for a grisly millisecond he pictured hitting the vampire with such force, all located in his heels, that he would sail clear through the creature’s body and plummet toward the earth, torn to shreds by its jagged ribs as he passed through.

  Hug the vampire, body to body. That had to be the way.

  Alex had the vampire’s body in sight and prepared to strike. When he could see his face and shining eyes, Alex extended his arms wide, as if he were about to hug a tree.

  The vampire looked up in shock just as Alex came rolling in at full speed. Suddenly Alex’s vision went out completely. Static roared in his brain like a lion, and for a moment it was as though he could see systems clicking on, sparks of electricity in his blacked-out vision kicking him awake once more. Alex heard the parachute lurch loudly as the vampire grunted.

  His vision returned and he found himself hugging the vampire chest to chest. He grabbed on to the straps, and they began to spin.

  The vampire moved quickly from shocked to confused to enraged. “Dudo! Idiot!” he heard the vampire cry as they spun, the parachute tilting this way and that as they swung. The vampire reared back his head and then lunged his teeth for Alex. He felt the press of fangs against the turtleneck and heard the sizzle of flesh and saliva against the silver lining. The pressure smarted, though, and Alex angrily butted the vampire in the head with his helmet. “Stop that!”

  “This is my parachute!” the vampire yelled, though Alex could barely hear him over the sound of the wind and through the plastic visor. There was something insane and almost merry in his sparkling eyes.

  “I’m joining you, and we can fight when we hit the ground!” Alex yelled.

  “No,” the vampire shouted. “It’s too much weight! Which one of us do you think will survive hitting the ground, eh?”

  Alex looked down to see a grassy field, barely visible in the moonlight. Even with the parachute, the ground was coming up fast. He understood now. The parachute had been prepared for just the vampire, who probably weighed less than Alex did, even with his muscular frame. Vampires were cat-like, fast and light.

  The vampire tried to kick him away, and Alex held on, smashing him in the nose briefly before yanking back from the teeth once more.

  They were hurtling toward the ground now. He judged he had another hundred yards to go. Alex loosed one of his hands and reached back to his go package.

  “So we die together, no?” The vampire had an insane look in his eye.

  “Nope,” Alex yelled.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I have something that you don’t have,” Alex answered, “and it’s going to give me some more time.”

  “What’s that?”

  Alex brought the Polibow to the vampire’s chest and pulled the trigger, feeling a solid thump as the bolt slammed between the creature’s ribs and into his heart.

  “Hot air.”

  The vampire roared and Alex dropped his Polibow and wrapped his elbows around the straps. He yanked up and away as far as possible, pressing his face against his forearms as a fireball erupted where the creature had been.

  Alex saw the orange flash burst against his wind visor and cringed as the helmet heated up immediately. As he closed his eyes the flash blazed brilliantly for a split second. The wave of fire and hot air pushed in all directions, and Alex was yanked sharply upward as the parachute caught the air and rose a full twenty yards.

  Alex opened his eyes and yelped; his leather jacket was on fire, and he started patting it down wildly with his free hand as he spun. For a moment he worried the parachute would catch fire, but like a hot air balloon, it merely expanded and rose with the sudden burst from the vampire.

  Alex spun with the straps, hanging on for dear life, his legs churning wildly.

  The parachute whipped and lurched as the earth came toward him once more, and Alex hit the soft grass running. Even so, he felt the shock in his knees and ran through it, releasing the straps and tottering forward, flipping end over end until he finally rolled to a stop, singed and bruised but alive.

  Near the horizon, a second fireball erupted with a distant boom as the plane slammed to the ground, lighting up the clouds with orange and yellow.

  Alex sat for a moment and caught his breath. He then fished a cell phone out of his pocket and punched in some numbers. Within half an hour, the air filled with the sound of rotor blades.

  CHAPTER 2

  Six hours later, he was back at Glenarvon-LaLaurie School on the banks of Lake Geneva as though nothing unusual had occurred.

  “You’ve got to tell me everything,” Sid Chamberlain, Alex’s ginger-haired Canadian roommate, said as he walked with Alex to the cafeteria. Alex still felt a twinge of pain in his knees, but all told, the worst he had to deal with were some mild burns on his forearms. Paul Messina, his other roommate, was walking ahead of them, so broad of shoulder that he acted as a human icebreaker, spreading the traffic of students in the halls out around them.

  Alex picked up a nervous sort of buzz in the air, most of it about upcoming travel. As he sped through the busy halls of the school in the morning, his stomach raging with hunger, he could hear people exchanging plans. Two weeks to the fall brea
k, Alex still had not decided if he would be going home.

  “I think they just wanted the computer.” Alex answered when Sid asked why the attack on the plane had happened.

  “So what about this creature school?” Sid’s eyes were on fire with the idea of a deep study of the races of vampires. When he wasn’t working on his own fiction, Sid spent every remaining waking minute studying vampires for Scarlet World, a game that he liked to play. Sid had stacks of characters he had designed based on the reference books he kept.

  “Oh, that.” They were turning into the cafeteria now, and Paul led them straight to a table in the back right corner. There she was. Minhi Krishnaswami was wearing a sweater jacket and waving to them.

  Minhi gave Paul a chaste peck as they took a seat in a clatter of chairs and dropped backpacks. “You’re back!” Minhi called, and Alex wanted to hug her, but he was already engaged in sitting down and had blown the chance. Wasn’t right to want to anyway. She was Paul’s girlfriend and there was nothing else to say.

  Minhi placed her palms flat on the table and leaned forward, eyes crinkling with her smile. “So?”

  Alex said to everyone, “Did you know that there’s a vampire that’s just a head, but it has bat wings coming out of its ears?”

  “Yeah, that’s the chonchon.” Sid nodded. “Did you see one?”

  “A dead one.”

  “Oh my God,” Sid practically panted.

  Paul chuckled. “Yes, yes, oh my God. Did you know,” he repeated in his London accent, slapping the table and looking at Minhi, “that our man in Switzerland threw himself out of a bloody plane last night?”

  Minhi’s mouth formed a confused O. “What?”

  “In my defense, that was really the strongest option on the table.” Alex looked around. “I’m starving.”

  “Here, here,” Paul said, and they stood and headed to the front of the cafeteria. They dropped all talk of planes and bat wings for the duration. These were Alex’s…what were they? Confidants? Friends, but friends that knew his secrets.