“The thing is, the moment they took my little girl is the moment they gave me one hell of an excuse to hunt down and kill every last one of them.”
I grinned. Ringleader cocked an eyebrow and kept right on looking at the squirt gun as though I’d gone crazy. In a way maybe I had, taking on a house full of vampires like this, but crazy was the sort of business I was in considering some of the shit I’d done before I became a campus cop.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “This is just another experiment. If what you say is true and there aren’t any vampires here then this won’t hurt a bit.”
25
Weapons Test
I pulled the trigger and the results were nothing short of spectacular. The guy threw his head back and screamed as his flesh started eating away like he’d been hit with acid.
In a way I supposed he had been hit with acid. Holy water was supposed to do that to vamps. I guess that meant vampirism was more of an old fashioned curse rather than some medical thing like some books and movies posited, but I had bigger problems than the existential and theological origins of vampirism right now.
Like the way the pretty girl who’d been talking to the guy melting away in a flash of steam suddenly stared at me with fangs descending and claws literally coming out.
Okay then. I guess she wouldn’t be all that surprised to find she was surrounded by vampires after all.
She jumped at me, but I was ready for that. I also wasn’t above hitting a lady if she suddenly spouted fangs and acted like she was going to kill me.
My fist made contact with her stomach and she went from hissing menacingly to crying out in pain as she doubled over on the ground. The others stared at me for a long pause before leaping into action.
That was just fine with me. That long pause was just enough time for me to point my squirt gun at one of the bigger guys to my right. Big guy screamed and hissed as the holy water made contact and I grinned.
I’d made the right choice dragging this old gun out. The thing could spray a good fifty feet and I was gonna need all that range tonight.
Unfortunately it needed a bit more pumping. The stream trailed off like I was at the end of a piss and I didn’t have time to pump it up again. So I tossed the gun carefully to the ground and prayed the vamps would be scared enough of the thing to stay the fuck away from it.
I really didn’t want to lose my favorite squirt gun. The thing would cost a fortune to replace if I had to buy a new one on eBay. I knew because I’d checked before heading out.
No time for ranged weapons. Instead I reached behind me and gripped my modified Louisville Slugger. Pulled it around just in time for another girl, this one with long dark hair, to come at me. I caught her right in the chest and she was obliging enough to ram herself onto my modified bat.
I swung the bat around and the momentum pulled her off the thing as her body started to disintegrate around her. The look of surprise never left her as she turned to dust.
I turned and looked at the two remaining vampires sitting on the porch. A redheaded girl and a guy sporting one of those ridiculous beards that were all the style with the hipsters on campus these days.
I thought it made them look like rejects from a civil war reenactment, but no one ever asked me what I thought of beards coming back into style. To be honest the only college style that ever overly concerned me was the blessed popularity of yoga pants.
They looked at me and then to each other. I put the pointed end of my bat down on the ground and gestured for them to come at me.
“I’ve already killed six of you by my count,” I said. “Want some?”
They turned and ran into the night with a supernatural speed that didn’t surprise me in the least since I knew they were, well, supernatural. I thought about giving chase and decided not to. Obviously they were the door guards and even more obviously I wasn’t going to catch them if they were moving like that.
I’d just have to get in and out before they got to whoever they were reporting to and the cavalry came.
I turned to the steps leading into the house and nearly tripped on the pretty blonde ringleader had been chatting with. She was down for the count and looked genuinely afraid as she looked up at me, fangs still drawn.
Tough luck bitch. I unscrewed the cap on one of my backup squirt gun reservoirs and emptied it over her. A moment later she was a pile of hissing steam.
So much for forever roaming the night as a hot college chick in ever changing college fashions.
I pulled one of my special lights out and kicked in the door. There was a party going on inside in a main room with a bunch of people sitting around sipping from cups. I didn’t want to think about what might be in those cups.
Everyone looked up at me and blinked a couple of times. The light was low, but it was still more than enough for me to see by. If these were vampires then it would be more than enough for them to see by too, assuming all that stuff about vampires being able to see in the dark wasn’t so much bullshit.
There was so much I didn’t know. So much I had to figure out through good old fashioned experimentation.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a big guy asked, stepping forward.
I didn’t like the looks of this. The guy was huge, and if he had the usual augmented strength of all the other vampires then he could be trouble.
Not to mention the room was full of a bunch of other potential vampires who could really ruin my night if I wasn’t careful. Damn it. I’d left my squirt gun out there on the lawn and I really didn’t relish the idea of taking this guy on one-on-one.
So I hefted the old light from my fish tank. The thing was a power hog and I really hoped this would work. Only one way to find out.
“I’m really sorry about your eyes if you’re not a vampire,” I said.
“What the fuck are you…”
Whatever he was about to say was strangled by his sudden screams as I flipped on the metal halide reef light and the room was flooded with the closest thing this college town could get to the equatorial sun without going to a tanning bed.
The guy’s screams turned to screeches as his skin started to sizzle. Not exactly bursting into flames like I would’ve expected if he was in direct sunlight, but then again I was carrying around a big light connected to a car battery and not fusing twenty million tons of hydrogen into helium every second.
Still, it was pretty impressive for being a light connected to a car battery. The guy fell back and the other vamps pulled away from me. The only problem with that plan was they were in a sitting room with no exit, so as I advanced on them the light trapped them in that room with no escape.
They tried to get around me but every time they did I pointed my light in the direction of the escapee and they started to char even faster. It was a grand plan right up until the moment one of the vamps lunged at me, only it turns out they weren’t lunging at me exactly because instead of going for my throat like I’d expect they grabbed at the wires connecting the light to the car battery and yanked which caused the light to go out.
Shit. I might’ve recovered from that, but another vampire hit with enough force that it ripped the metal halide reef light out of my hand and it fell to the floor where it cracked open.
That wasn’t good. Someone would have to clean up the mercury, but I had more pressing issues. Like the vampires that were still cowering from me but would realize any moment now that I was vulnerable. They seemed like a hell of a bigger immediate health hazard than some loose mercury from an old reef light.
“Well shit,” I said.
Thankfully it took the semi-charred vampires a moment to realize what was going on. More than enough time for me to pull out another of the extra tanks for my squirt gun, pull off the top, and spatter holy water on them.
That really added to the sizzle already created by the light. I swung around with my bat in my other hand and faced down the big vampire that had challenged me, looking far more charred than he had moments a
go, only this time he took one look at the nasty bat/stake combo and decided he didn’t want anything to do with me.
The thing shouldered past me and ran.
Huh. Big guy. Little bitch.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
I turned and looked at the other vamps that had been huddled into a corner, but they were in the process of dissolving away. Damn. Apparently the holy water kept working on them even if they only got lightly splashed with the stuff.
I’d have to remember that one. It could be a hell of a force multiplier if I could remember to stop leaving my fucking squirt gun behind.
For now I had bigger fish to fry. Ricky told me something was going on at this house and I figured the spray painted windows in the basement meant anything nasty was going down in that basement. It was time to get down there and bust some heads.
I stepped into a hall leading back to a kitchen and saw a couple of vamps looking warily towards the front of the house. They seemed even more surprised when I stepped into view. Obviously I wasn’t what they were expecting
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them asked.
“I’m the guy who just killed all your friends in the front room and out on the porch,” I said. “And in a minute I’m going to kill your asses too.”
“Fuck you,” the other one said, charging down the hall.
I didn’t bother with subtlety or tricks with this one. I didn’t have time to pull out the remaining refill for my squirt gun and my special reef light wasn’t going to do any good now that it was busted on the ground in the front room with no power source.
So I went with the old fashioned solution. In this case that solution was slamming my bat into the side of the vampire’s head causing him to go down for the count. I finished by stabbing the pointy end into the vampire’s heart causing him to scream before rapidly decomposing.
I looked up but the other one was already gone. So I moseyed back to the kitchen only to find it empty as well. Conveniently there were two doors open back there. One led outside and one led down, and I figured that second one was for me.
It was time to see what there was to see down in the basement that somebody obviously didn’t want any outsiders poking around in.
26
Jailbreak
Did you take care of whatever was going on up there Johnny?” a voice called up the stairs as I made my way down.
I stopped near the bottom and had a look at what was going on down here. The more I looked the more I realized that whoever was hiding this place had a good reason for trying to keep it from the world.
There was a group of young girls cowering in one corner. I figured there were maybe five or six, but they were huddled close together so it was difficult to get a count.
All of them were dressed for a night partying so I figured they’d come to this house party thinking they were going to have the time of their lives and instead they found themselves in a vampire den facing down what promised to be an almost certain death.
My grip tightened on my trusty bat. These assholes thought they could do this to innocent girls on my turf? Well I was going to teach them what happened when they really pissed me off, and I was really pissed off right about now.
“Who the fuck are you?” a guy who looked not much older than the girls asked, a hint of anger coming to his voice.
“I’m your worst fucking nightmare,” I said.
It was cliche, to be sure, but sometimes cliches were there for a reason. In this case it happened to be absolutely true.
The vampire’s lips curled up in a derisive sneer. He motioned to two beefy guys on either side of him with majorly pale complexions.
“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, old man, but you busted up the wrong party,” the guy said.
I shrugged. I figured I’d get a response like that, and I was ready to play if that’s what these guys wanted. They looked tough, but they also looked like college kids for all their size. I figured that meant they were all bark and no bite like every other vampire I’d gone up against since I discovered vampires existed.
I tossed my bat to the side and cracked my knuckles. Tried to look nice and casual as I regarded the two of them.
“All your friends up top?” I asked. “Dead.”
I frowned. That didn’t seem like quite the right way to phrase it considering they were already dead by the time I got to them. At some point I’d have to ask one of them how they referred to their state of unliving before I killed one. Unkilled one. What the fuck ever.
“What I mean to say is they’re dust. I killed them. Obviously they were already dead. Or undead. Ah fuck it.”
I growled and darted forward ducking down and slamming into the big one’s stomach. He let out a surprised noise as he went clattering back and the girls hiding in the corner screamed.
I rolled my eyes. Typical college girls. Here I was trying my best to rescue them and they were screaming like I was the monster.
The second beefy vampire came up behind me and I responded by kicking him right in the nuts. The guy went down for the count holding his family jewels, and that was just enough of an opening for me to pull a stake out of my makeshift bandolier and slam it down into the vampire’s back right about where his heart should be.
I grimaced as it made contact. I never liked close combat like this even when I was in the service. I also really didn’t like working with stakes and decided to try another experiment. I was pretty sure I’d hit the guy’s heart, so I pulled the stake out.
Sure enough the beefy vampire fell to the ground and did that creepy decomposing thing they did when they weren’t long for this world. A moment later there was a pile of dust where the beefcake bloodsucker had been.
“Well then. Guess I don’t have to leave a stake in there,” I muttered, though I was sure it was loud enough for the vamps to hear with their heightened senses.
Good. I wanted them to hear me using their undeaths as an experiment. “Probably shouldn’t have spent so much time making these bad boys, but at least I can use old reliable now.”
I pulled out something far more familiar. A menacing combat knife that would have looked like a machete in the hands of lesser men. It had seen me through a lot of shit over the years, and it looked like those years weren’t close to done yet.
Even if I’d desperately hoped I’d never have to see it again after putting it away in the basement.
The second beefy vamp scrambled to his feet and his eyes darted to the rapidly decomposing form that had so recently been his partner in crime.
“That’s right,” I said. “I just killed all your buddies upstairs and I took out your other friend. Do you really want to try me?”
“What are you waiting for?” the one who was obviously in charge hissed. “You know if they don’t get their shipment…”
I glanced to the girls cowering in the corner. I had a pretty good idea what the “shipment” was, and I didn’t like the idea of that sort of thing going down in my town. Every girl here was somebody’s daughter just like that poor girl last night. The big difference was I could do something to save these girls.
I might not be able to free my own daughter right away, but I could sure as hell do a favor for some other people who’d sent their kids off to college under the assumption they wouldn’t have to worry about monsters out of a movie coming into reality and chasing down their precious daughters.
The shouting from the skinny bossman seemed to steel the remaining beefy vamp’s resolve. It let out a hiss and barreled towards me.
I supposed that sort of thing might have even been intimidating if someone was seeing an undead monstrosity with fangs where its canines should be hurtling towards them for the first time. The problem for this vamp? It wasn’t the first time I’d seen something like this.
I knew these things could be killed, and killing things was something I was very good at.
I didn’t bother with anything fancy this time. I waited until
the vamp muscle was almost on me and stepped to the side. I shot my arm out with my knife at the ready.
There was a brief moment where the vampire realized it had erred terribly in charging me. I saw the monster’s eyes go wide and turn from rage to terror in a moment, but that moment was too late.
It slammed into my knife and kept right on running in a cloud of dust that kept moving through the air where the vampire would’ve been. I retrieved my knife from the pile of dust.
I was all efficiency now. I strode across the room with purpose, and the girls in the back weren’t screaming now. No, they were watching me with something that approached hope. They’d finally realized that maybe I was one of the good guys.
Good, but first I needed to neutralize the last threat in the room. A threat that had its hands up now as though that was going to save the asshole from my wrath.
“Look buddy,” the head vamp said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but maybe we could reach a deal? How about I let you have a couple of the girls before I send them off? They’re not telling anyone and hurk!”
That last bit trailed off as I reached down between the guy’s legs and grabbed his nuts with all the strength I could muster. If I’d learned anything in the hell that was the past couple of nights it was that a nut shot was the same whether you were a fanged undead creature of the night or a normal mortal.
“What the hyaaaargh!” the vamp screamed as I squeeze nice and hard. Then with my free hand I socked the guy in the jaw.
Fighting in real life was usually different from fighting in the movies. People were both a hell of a lot more fragile and a hell of a lot more resilient than the movies let on. For instance, a shot like that to the jaw would usually result in a serious injury for most people, but hitting someone on the head wasn’t a magical knock out button.
And if you did hit someone hard enough to knock them out that meant you’d hit them hard enough to do some serious damage. Potentially fatal damage.
Blake Byron: Paranormal Investigator Page 15