“Did we get her?” Dudley asked.
“I’m not sure; I can’t find her.”
The soft tapping on the back of my shoulder should have alarmed me, but for some reason I thought it was one of my teammates.
It was the vampire. She was smiling at me and dangling my tomahawk by the blade between two of her fingers. Somehow, she had managed to find the one patch of shadow in the entire room and was safe and sound.
For the moment.
I reached out with all my might and grabbed her by the throat while at the same time shoving her against the wall. My actions had the desired effect, and she never noticed that I had dropped my mp7 and flicked out my folding knife.
She easily removed my hand from around her neck, but the look on her face as my knife yet again opened her throat was priceless.
The blood began to gush, and I was able to slash her neck a few more times before she was finally able to overcome the shock of my attack and kicked me across the room.
She didn’t even try to advance on me. She didn’t get a chance. Dudley had begun shooting out the windows behind her and for the first time she kissed the sunlight.
The effects were less than impressive.
She didn’t burst into flames. She didn’t roll up into a ball of agony and simply burn away. She just sort of melted. Nothing incapacitating, nothing like that at all, just think of nasty sunburn and multiply it by about a thousand.
Her flesh did bubble and crisp, and smoke did rise from the exposed flesh, but I was pretty disappointed that she didn’t explode.
Well, on second thought, she did sort of explode. She exploded right out of the room and down the hallway to what seemed to be the bedrooms.
“Did you see that shit?” Dudley asked.
“Yeah, I saw it. Where does that hallway lead?”
“It leads to the bedrooms, but which one did she enter?”
Even through the dust I saw what he was talking about. There were at least five rooms at the end of the hallway, but only one of them had a shattered door.
“Let’s finish this,” I said to no one in particular.
I began to slowly walk towards the hallway when Nick started shouting.
“We got company,” Nick said. “Lots and lots of company.”
Right after he said that, I heard the moans. Fortunately none of them were screaming yet, but that was only a matter of time. They tended to be a bunch of noisy bastards whenever something aroused their curiosity.
“Hold them off,” I shouted back. “Don’t let them get into the house.”
“I’m on it,” Nick said, and he and Javie began firing out the windows at the zombies flocking towards us.
“Dudley,” I said. “You’re with me and…and…where the hell is Georgie?”
I was beginning to panic. Both Dudley and Georgie were in that pit and only Dudley had emerged. I didn’t waste a moment limping to the edge of the hole. When I got there, he almost shot me in the face.
Georgie was just fine. In fact, he didn’t seem to have a mark on him. I would have laughed, but the moment really wasn’t there.
“Georgie,” I said. “Stop being a pussy and do something useful. Get those survivors out of those chains and do it now.”
I’m pretty sure that he nodded, but I didn’t wait around. I immediately set off towards the room with the broken down door. Dudley was right behind me, and I almost jumped out of my skin when he started tapping me on the shoulder.
When I turned around I saw that he was handing me my tomahawk, I breathed a sigh of relief and muttered my thanks. I was going to be needing that particular weapon.
When we entered the room with Merrick, the stink of vampire hit us like a slap. It’s a nasty smell that I couldn’t even begin to describe. It’s not as bad as the smell of zombies, but it’s close.
The dark room seemed to be deserted, but the smears of blood along the walls gave it a sort of lived in appearance. Merrick began to sniff around the floor, and I walked over for a closer inspection of what she had found.
She was sniffing at some drops of some type of liquid, but in the darkness I couldn’t tell if the liquid was vampire blood or human blood. Dudley had walked past us towards the bathroom as I studied the drops, and he returned from the empty room with a confused look on his face.
I pulled out my flashlight and shined the beam on the drops. The bright light lit the floor up in a wide circle, and I was able to see the black drops of vampire blood that Merrick had been sniffing at.
I got down on all fours and searched for more of the vampire’s blood. I found what I was looking for on the side of the bed.
“Is she under the fucking bed?” Dudley asked as he backed away.
In order to answer his question, I grabbed a corner of the bed and flipped the entire thing out of the way. There was another hole beneath it. It was barely wide enough for me to fit through.
“Are we going down there after her?” Dudley asked.
“I guess so,” I answered.
“I need to find another line of work,” Dudley mumbled.
I didn’t respond. In fact, I agreed with him.
I jumped down the hole and made sure to land on my good leg. All in all, I’d say it was about eight feet deep and it opened up into an 8’x8’ room with a ceiling made up of many different sizes of wooden boards so low that I had to duck my head. Dudley almost landed on top of me when he jumped down. As I looked around the room, I noticed that the dirty plywood walls had blood smears.
Merrick began to bark from the top of the hole.
“Maybe we should take her with us,” Dudley said. “She can track the vampire.”
“No,” I answered. “I don’t want Merrick getting too close; she might get hurt. Besides, I can follow the vampire’s trail.”
“Well, where are you going to start? This room has no exits.”
He was right about that. There were no clear passages leading out of the room. I was thinking that there had to be a hidden door somewhere so I aimed the beam of my flashlight downwards and started searching the dirt floor.
It took awhile, but I finally found a drop of black blood and two feet away from that one, I found another one. The blood drops led me across the room to a corner with a hairline crack in the wood. I tapped on the area near the crack and was rewarded with a hollow echo.
I then punched the area and the piece broke free revealing a tight hidden passage in the corner of the wall. Dudley and I were going to have to crawl through it. It wasn’t a very pleasant notion.
The little tunnel led another eight feet under the house and we emerged into a room very similar to the one we had just left, complete with a wooden ceiling consisting of different sized boards and plywood walls. The only exception was that this room held a coffin.
Dudley let out a deep breath when he emerged from the tunnel and saw the wooden coffin. We had come to the end of the line. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Also, there was a presence of evil. It just felt wrong to be in that room, but I couldn’t leave. I had a job to do. I had a duty to perform, and I wasn’t leaving until accounts were settled.
I quietly approached the coffin. I could no longer hear Merrick barking from the bedroom. I could no longer hear the muffled sound of gunshots as Nick and Javie kept the approaching zombies from entering the house.
The moment seemed to drag on and on. The coffin was by no means modern. It was one of those old western style jobs. Bare wood and cheaply made. It looked as if it would crumble if I stomped on the lid. That’s when I noticed the hinges. This coffin wasn’t the kind that gets nailed shut. It had hinges on the side so it could be opened and closed.
I held my breath as I reached out and grabbed a hold of the corner of the lid. I put myself in a position that would allow me to dive out of the way if she came flying out at me and I began to lift the lid. The hinges creaked loudly, and I jumped away causing the lid to slam down with a loud crack.
Dudley jumped ab
out a foot.
Then he started to snicker.
“Maybe you should lift it up,” I said. “That way I can nail her with the tomahawk if she grabs a hold of you.”
“Good luck with that idea,” Dudley said.
I opened the coffin.
It was empty, just a little bit of dirt on the bottom.
“There must be another tunnel that we missed,” said Dudley.
“There wasn’t another tunnel,” I replied. “I followed the blood drops. She had to have gone this way.”
Dudley came away from the tunnel we had used to get into the room and stood next to me besides the coffin. I thought for a moment and once again began to search the floor for blood drops with the beam of my flashlight. Perhaps there was another tunnel leading out of this room that we had missed in the darkness.
Dudley began to search as well. We looked near three of the four corners but came up empty handed until Dudley began to search the dirt floor near the final corner of the room.
“Jaxon,” Dudley said. “I think I found something. It might be a blood…”
He didn’t finish his thought. A pale hand came down from between two ceiling boards and grabbed him by the hair. We never looked up. The new tunnel was above us in the ceiling. It was plain as day and we never even noticed it.
Dudley twisted and turned as the hand tried to pull him up through the boards and into the new tunnel. His frantic movements saved his life. The vampire couldn’t pull him into the hole. Given a few more seconds, she might have been able to do it, but I wasn’t about to give her those few seconds.
I swung the tomahawk into her outstretched arm and damn near severed it. Actually, I was somewhat shocked that the arm didn’t come flying off, but vampires are built pretty damn tough. Still, the wound deadened the arm. It went immediately limp, and I shoved Dudley out of the way and sprayed automatic fire into the hole.
I was rewarded by a crumbling noise above my head, and I had to step out of the way as the vampire fell from the hole onto the dirty floor.
She looked horrible. Her skin was as white as paper. Her tutu was smeared with black blood and slimy dirt. The skin on her face and arms was burnt horribly, and worst of all, the tomahawk wound in her head had not yet closed, and I could see a piece of her brain.
“Wait,” she gasped as I walked towards her with my tomahawk.
I paused for just a moment, shocked that she was actually asking me not to attack her. I couldn’t remember her doing anything other than threatening me or insulting me.
“You win,” the vampire said. “I’ll leave. Just go away, and I won’t bother you anymore.”
For the very first time, I could see the actual fear in her dead eyes.
“Where’s my friend?” I asked. “What did you do with him?”
The only answer I received was a quiet, dry laugh. So I pulled back my tomahawk and prepared to deliver what I was hoping would be the final blow of the fight.
“Leave me alone,” the vampire said as she suddenly slammed into me and ran from the room and into the tunnel leading back to the bedroom.
“Fuck me,” Dudley said. “How the hell can she still be moving?”
“Beats me,” I answered. “But did you notice how much she’s slowed down?”
Dudley didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he followed me back the way we had come. I could just see her feet disappear up the hole under the bed as we entered the first room. I limped in pursuit and had just started to climb the hole when I heard the sound of Merrick attacking and the vampire screaming.
I climbed to the top of the hole just in time to catch Merrick out of the air as the vampire threw her away. I quickly set Merrick back down on her feet and then straightened up to face the vampire.
She stood in the corner of the room. She was crouched and waiting for just the right moment to pounce on me.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like a little girl.
“Not a chance,” I answered.
She found her moment when Dudley poked his head out of the hole and I briefly looked in his direction. What she didn’t realize was that I wasn’t really distracted. I just gave her a fake out because I wanted her away from the wall.
To her shock, I met her charge and before her good arm could close around my body I ducked down and picked her straight up into the air by her legs. I didn’t try to flip her over or slam her down onto the ground. Instead, I never stopped charging forward. I just ran with all the speed my wounded leg could muster, right to the blackened bedroom window and dove head first through the painted glass into the bright morning sunlight of the backyard.
I felt the wet drip of blood from a dozen small cuts on my face due to the broken glass as I tumbled and rolled on the cold grass. I felt me knee pop and threaten to explode. Yet I managed to find my footing and locate the vampire.
She had tumbled from my grasp, but she hadn’t tumbled very far. She looked me straight in the eyes for just a moment and then she began to scream as the smoke rose from her body and her skin began to blister and crack. Dudley emerged from the broken window and began to fire shot after shot into her chest whenever she tried to crawl away.
A burning vampire is a difficult thing to watch. They seem all too human as they twist and contort in agony. The smell is nauseating. The end is almost too far away. Her features had been burnt away completely when I finally took pity on her.
I swung my tomahawk with all my might and cleaved through her neck. The screaming stopped instantly, and I began to notice the bright and clear morning for the first time. It was almost beautiful if I looked away from the melting corpse at my feet. I’d never been much of a daylight person, but at that moment I was certainly grateful.
Dudley and I watched the copse sizzle and pop until there was nothing left but ash. The flames never came forth. I think I was a little disappointed at that. I was hoping to see a much more impressive death. What we got was a slow and torturous end.
Then we heard the sounds of muffled gunfire and the screams of many zombies. I’m positive that the battle with the zombies had been raging on all along as we watched the vampire dissolve, but only now when we were satisfied that she wasn’t coming back and Dudley had kicked away the largest pile of ash with his boot did the realization begin to hit us.
We were trapped.
I leaned on Dudley and we hobbled to the back door of the house. Merrick rushed forward from the bedroom and jumped into my arms. Now that the vampire was dead she wanted her fair share of attention. I gave her a quick scratch and joined Nick at one of the front windows.
The zombies were everywhere.
I radioed immediately to Hardin and told him to drop off a shit-ton of ammo. Then I looked towards the survivors. All of them were emaciated and weak looking. They wouldn’t be able to make a run to the Jeeps.
“We’ll make a stand here,” I announced. “I need some time to come up with a plan.”
“Not a problem,” Dudley said. “The house doesn’t have a lot of windows. We can board things up and give you some time to repair your leg and head.”
“Dude, get off me,” Nick said. It was the last thing I heard as I slid ungracefully into him and passed out.
“You passed out?”
Right on top of Nick. One second I was standing there and then I wasn’t.
“Why did you pass out?”
I had been taking some serious damage since I got to the hotel. My messed up leg was the worst of it, but I’m pretty sure that I had a concussion and possibly some broken ribs. I was also exhausted.
“You had all that going on?”
Yeah, vampires hit hard.
“Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
Who am I going to tell? It’s not like anyone could have done anything. Besides, I can put most problems to the side and get on with my job. The leg was the only thing giving me trouble.
“I’ve heard from more than a few people that you are relentless in a fight. They sort of think
it’s a little spooky. Would you agree?”
I would agree. I have no problems with that one. When it’s time to fight, I’m going to do so until I can no longer do so. I guess it seems a little spooky, but I am the Guardian after all. I can absorb more damage than the average person and continue to function.
“How long was it before you woke up after passing out on Nick?”
I think I was out for about ten hours or so. I could have shaved maybe five or six hours off of that if someone would have woken me up, but the boys thought that I needed the rest.
I actually woke up to the sounds of screaming.
One second I was nestled firmly under a layer of sleep and then I began to hear the screams. They were distant at first, but they soon became louder and louder. The muffled thumps of silenced weapons came next.
I opened my eyes.
I was in a bathtub full of warm water. My clothes were cleaned and folded on top of the sink. My weapons, boots and backpack were stacked in a pile next to the clothes. The only thing I had on was my underwear and my wristwatch.
I looked at the time and realized that it was only a few hours until dark. The screaming began again. It sounded like Georgie. I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up because he was irritating the hell out of my headache. Then I realized that I no longer had a headache. My leg was all healed up as well. In fact, I felt pretty damn good.
I stood up in the tub and grabbed a large towel to dry off with. When I was dry, I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was looking pretty healthy and energetic as far as I could tell. Nothing to complain about until Georgie barged through the door.
“Jaxon,” Georgie shrieked. “We’re in trouble. They are breaking through our barriers.”
Fortunately, at that point I had my pants on.
“Did you forget how to knock?” I asked. “Or are you trying to sneak a peek at my awesomeness?”
“What?” Georgie asked before it dawned on him that I was just joking around. “Seriously, we’re in trouble.”
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