by Cullen Bunn
The two children pinned me down.
I fired the gun, destroying the head of one of the children. The body collapsed on top of me, spewing slimy puss and green vapor into my face. I almost puked up pork rinds and cheese puffs. The other child—the girl I had shot in the first place—was still on me. I pointed the gun at her and fired.
Click!
Out of ammo.
I pulled the trigger again. The gun dry fired on empty chambers.
The girl’s talons scraped my cheek as she pushed my head to the side, exposing my throat. I tasted dirt. I blindly struggled to shove her away, but she was far too strong. She leaned close. Her icy lips and sharp teeth brushed against my skin, but she pulled away before she took a mouthful of my flesh. She snapped her head up as an angry, train whistle sound resonated through the night.
* * *
A dark shape reared over us. I wondered if the shadow of Death had come for me.
With all my might, I pushed the little girl off of me and rolled—
Just as a bull’s hooves drove fencepost-size holes in the ground—right where my head had been seconds earlier.
Samson had returned, pissed-off and out for revenge.
The girl hopped to her feet and spat at the bull, tried to ward him off with a swipe of her claws.
Samson stood between me and my attacker. He stomped the earth and snorted, swung his horns from side to side in a challenge. The smell of burned hair and skin clung to the air around the behemoth and vied for dominance over the smells of spoiled meat and the green vapor. A blast of steam gushed from Samson’s wet, flaring nostrils.
I pulled myself to my feet, saw Jack using his shotgun and flashlight as clubs against two small figures. I called out to Jack, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Samson or the little girl for more than a second.
The girl shrieked and lunged past Samson, trying to get at me.
But she never made it.
With a swipe of his engine-block head, Samson smashed into the little girl. A great, curling horn caught her across the midsection. Her body folded around it, then unfolded as she hurtled through the air and thudded to the ground. She scrambled to her feet and backed away, vanishing into the dark.
Samson whirled and turned his attention towards me.
“Easy now, big fella,” I said, taking a step away. “I’m the one who helped you get free.”
But in the bull’s eyes I might as well have set fire to his scrotum myself.
He charged.
I flung myself out of his way. Samson trampled the earth as he passed, then wheeled around for another stampede.
I hauled ass.
Samson’s hot breath warmed my backside, urging me to run faster.
Straight towards Jack.
He still fought with two of the monsters. He punched one, staggering it, and when the little boy leaped at him again, Jack clotheslined him, damn near yanking his head off. He drove his knee into the other, raked his fingers across the boy’s eyes, like a professional wrestler in a no-holds-barred match. He didn’t see me. Didn’t see the bull.
“Look out!” I cried.
Samson rammed into the small of my back, and my feet left the ground. I crashed into a wooden fence, tearing it down and bruising my ribs. I couldn’t breathe, but I was lucky one of the bull’s horns didn’t stab into me.
Stars danced in my eyes. I called out to Jack again, but my voice came in wheezing gasps. I tired to push myself to my hands and knees, but fell back to the dirt.
Samson continued his charge towards Jack.
The bull remembered his earlier humiliation and wanted to settle the score.
Jack tussled with the two creatures, pushing them back in a desperate struggle to avoid their snapping teeth. He was slashed and bloodied in several places. He held a kicking, scratching, biting creature in each arm. If you didn’t know better you might think he was just playing around with them. Jack’s eyes grew round as saucers as Samson barreled towards him.
Jack was finished for sure.
But just as Samson blasted past, Jack dodged to the side, and now he moved less like a wrestler and more like a bullfighter, only instead of flapping a red sheet, he waved monstrous children. He hurled one of the boys at Samson, and the angry bull’s right horn pierced the child through the chest. The boy shrieked as the tip of the horn emerged from his torso in a gout of smelly green and white spray. He went limp, still dangling from Samson’s horn like a morbid decoration.
As the bull spun, the dead boy’s slack arms and legs flailed.
Jack hurled the second boy at the animal’s head, impaling him on the bull’s left horn. The child twitched, grasping at the horn jutting from his heart, and sagged. He nearly matched the corpse of the first boy.
Samson shook his head, trying to free himself of the two dead boys. The bodies bounced, legs and arms flopping, like dancing puppets. When the bodies didn’t come free, the bull only grew more angry. He stamped the earth, then lowered his head and charged Jack once more.
This time, Jack stood his ground. As Samson drew close, Jack pulled back a mighty fist and punched the bull right between the eyes. I heard a thump and the crack of bone. I didn’t know if Jack’s hand or the bull’s skull—or both—had shattered.
Samson backpedaled on the wobbly legs of a newborn calf, then fell over in a heap with the dead children still stuck to his horns.
Just then, the little girl jumped out at me again.
I snatched up one of the fallen fence posts and jammed the jagged end through her heart. She shrieked, spewing green smoke from the wound, and dropped like a sack of rotting onions.
Jack’s hand was already swelling. I figured he’d busted it pretty badly when he knocked old Samson cold. Around us lay the still-twitching bodies of dead children and the unconscious bulk of the meanest bull in the county.
Jack bled from a half dozen angry looking wounds, same as me. His hand was red and swollen, and he held it close to his chest. But we didn’t insult each other by worrying over our injuries, at least not yet. There’d be time enough to bemoan our nicks and cuts and compare scars later.
I scrounged up a couple of the bullets I dropped. I looked for more, but had no luck. I grabbed the flashlight, too. Jack’s flashlight was smashed to bits during his battle with the children.
“That,” I said, “was a hell of a thing.”
Jack shrugged. “Same old, same old.”
We started to laugh, but a sound form the house stopped us cold.
An infant’s gurgling cry.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered.
Not a baby. Anything but a baby.
Still favoring his swollen hand, Jack squatted and grabbed another jagged piece of broken fencepost from the ground. “Bring the light,” he said.
The baby’s wail lured us into the house. The sound was so much worse than Samson’s furious cry, because my imagination ran wild at the notion of what we’d find when we reached the beckoning source.
The house was a wreck. Windows smashed—from the outside coming in, I noticed. Drying blood pooling on the hardwood floor. Some of the puddles looked partially sopped up and smeared, and the tiny handprints in the gore told me the children had gone on hand and knee to lick at the blood.
I loaded the last two bullets into the pistol. My fingers trembled, and I clenched my hand into a fist, my nails digging into my palm.
The baby’s cry came from a dark room at the end of the hall. The walls were covered with crooked family portraits—pictures of pimpled, bearded, cross-eyed men and women, pictures of gnarled old-timers, pictures of mothers and fathers …
Pictures of children.
Big Jack stopped in the doorway to the infant’s room. I shone the light past him, toward’s a crib and the moving form within.
The baby cried, a hungry sound.
Jack stepped toward the crib, blocking my line of sight. Leaning over, he raised the fencepost and brought it down in a swift motion.
Jack stood quietly with his back to me for several minutes.
“Jack,” I said, breaking the silence. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
“You know what they were, don’t you?” Jack said as we staggered through the woods.
“Like hell I do.”
“Draculas,” he said. “They were draculas.”
“What—” I stopped myself. I knew what he meant. A couple of years back, Jack had taken Cordelia to the picture show in West Plains. The movie had been Dracula or Dracula’s Revenge or Son of Dracula or something like that. To hear Miss Cordelia tell it, it was one of the most horrible things she had ever witnessed, full of violence, sexual innuendo, and gore.
“All that blood,” she had said. “It was awful. Ghastly.”
But Jack loved it. Went to see it a couple more times and made special trips whenever a monster flick lit up the big screen.
“God damned draculas,” Jack spat.
Vampires. He meant vampires.
Hell. Who was I to argue?
I nodded. All right. Vampires.
“Here’s the bad news,” Jack said. “You become a dracula when you get bit by another dracula.”
“I thought that was werewolves.”
“Them too. It works near about the same way. Anyway, somehow, the Stubbs were attacked by a dracula, I reckon, and it just left those young’uns there to change.”
“You didn’t get … bit did you?” I asked, hoping Jack was just reeling me in for another ribbing.
He sucked at his teeth and shook his head.
“So what’s to worry about? They’re all dead now.”
“Not all of them. Something turned them, wouldn’t you say? And that something may still be out here right now.”
I was starting to like the vampire theory less and less.
“And whatever it was,” Jack said, “it attacked Seth, too.”
But that would mean—
We picked up the pace.
* * *
Before we reached the Hollow, I realized we were being followed. Not just followed. Stalked. I heard the soft crackle of twigs under foot, a shuffling in the scrub. Someone kept pace with us. I spied movement beyond a line of nearby trees. Pale flesh. A glint of red.
My muscles tensed. I crouched down behind a tangle of branches and dry leaves, turning the flashlight off. I hoped we hadn’t been spotted. I’m no coward, but I didn’t want to run into another of those… things anytime soon.
A few hundred yards ahead, the forest floor would give way to the craggy slope of the Hollow. I was guessing the distance, but didn’t dare turn on the flashlight to get my bearings.
Another dark shape loped through the brush. Between us and the Hollow. Coming closer.
I pulled my gun and silently prayed my last two bullets struck true. The gun had been near about useless against the creatures at the Stubbs place, but it was something at least.
Jack still carried the wooden stake—the weapon he had used to kill an infant.
No.
The Stubbs family was already dead by the time Jack and I arrived at the farm. We only laid them to rest. I sounded like a character from one of those Dracula movies Jack liked so much. But maybe that was easier—thinking of the children as something other than human.
“You don’t suppose it’s another of those…” Draculas, I almost said. “…things, do you?”
I heard the snapping again. Close. Too close. I flipped the flashlight’s switch and pointed it towards the pitch black swelling beyond the trees. Shadows fled from the chasing light.
Three men stood in the thickets, two blocking our path and another behind us.
They were naked, and their faces were whiskered and covered in pimples near about ready to burst. Their shriveled peckers bounced from side to side as they attacked. Their eyes glowed like a blood moon.
They jumped at us.
Jack raised his leg and planted his boot in the chest of one, and the vampire sprawled back and crashed into the other. They tumbled over. I pistol-whipped the third and elbowed him for good measure. He fell. By the time they scrambled to their feet, Jack and I were making tracks.
We crashed through the woods. I heard the three vampires chasing after us, cackling like madmen. We headed away from the Hollow, the vampires herding us in another direction. I felt as if my chest might break open, and my heart might jump from my body, yell out, “every man for himself!” and dash off into the darkness. My bad knee ached, but I didn’t dare stop running.
Somewhere up ahead, I heard babbling water. A stream. Or maybe that was just piss dribbling down my leg.
We stumbled out of the treeline and splashed down into a shallow strip of creek run-off. Jack nearly fell over. I followed, and the icy water rushed into my boots and soaked my socks. The three vampires lurched out of the trees.
And they stopped.
“Why aren’t they coming after us?” I asked.
Jack snapped his finger. “The water,” he said. “Dracula can’t cross running water.”
The vampires growled deep in their throats. Their dark faces were lit by their red eyes.
“Go on back where you came from!” Jack shouted. “Git!”
His version of “Back, back, creature of the night!”
As if heeding his command, the three lumbered into the woods again, casting hungry, defeated glances back at us, like we’d hurt their feelings.
“What do you know?” Jack muttered.
“Something tells me they’re looking for another way around,” I said. “Let’s not be here when they it.”
* * *
First thing I noticed upon stepping into Cecil’s cabin was the soft hiss and pop of the record player. The needle had already reached the end of the last track, but I saw the sleeve of a Don Williams album beside the player.
My blood boiled.
Jack staggered in, exhausted, and near about collapsed into a chair in front of the poker table. He tossed the stake onto the table with a clatter, knocking a couple of cards to the floor.
“Are you all right?” Sue met us at the door. “You look like hell. What happened?”
“How’s Seth?” I ignored her questions. I still didn’t quite know how to explain what I’d seen, what had happened, not without sounding like I’d been sampling shine.
“He’s Sleeping.”
“No sign of the doctor, either,” Cecil said. “I thought he’d be here by now.”
“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Sue snapped. “What did you find?”
I pushed past her and strode across the room. I didn’t mean to ignore Sue, but my mind spun in a storm of confusion and anger and fear. Seth lay upon the couch, still as a coffin nail and covered in a patchwork quilt, his hands crossed over his stomach.
“He dead?” Jack called after me.
“I can’t tell.”
“We didn’t let him die if that’s what you’re wondering” Sue said, her feathers ruffled.
“Seth, wake up.” I slapped him across the face. “Come on.”
“Hey!” Sue snapped. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Careful.” Jack stepped up behind me. “He might be turned by now.”
“Turned?” Sue asked. “What are you talking about? Turned into what?”
“A dracula,” Jack answered.
“A what?” Sue asked.
Cecil laughed, but stifled his mirth when he realized Jack was deadly serious.
I smacked Seth again, harder this time. “Wake up!” When he didn’t stir, I drew my hand back again, but Sue caught me by the wrist.
“I’m not letting you beat him.”
Just then, it hit me. When we brought Seth in, his face had been cut up. The cuts were gone now. The faint ghosts of scars remained.
Seth opened his eyes.
His eyes didn’t have any whites. They had turned blood red.
I jumped back, pulling Sue with me. She squeaked i
n surprise.
Cecil muttered, “What the hell?”
“You boys back already?” Seth chuckled as he sat up. His voice was hoarse, like he hadn’t had a sip of water in days. His lips peeled away from jagged fangs in a cruel grin. “How’s the young’uns?”
Like he somehow knew what we’d done.
The zits on his forehead and cheeks split open, oozing tiny, slow-moving rivers of puss.
Sue clutched at my arm, breathed, “Oh, God.”
That tickled Seth, and he rocked back and forth on the couch, giggling. His red eyes bore right into mine. He clacked his razor-sharp teeth at me.
Jack had just about had enough. He grabbed Seth’s shirt collar, yanking him to his feet.
“Hand me that stake,” he said. “I’m gonna put it right through—”
Seth grabbed Jack’s busted, swollen hand and squeezed. I heard the wet snapping of bone. Jack screamed and went to one knee like he was proposing marriage. Seth, looming over him now, twisted and squashed Jack’s hand, like he was trying to wring water from a cloth. Tears ran down Jack’s face.
“Let him go!” Cecil pulled at Seth’s arm.
Seth released Jack, and the big man crumpled, laying on his side and drawing his legs up to his chest, protecting his hand. Seth backhanded Cecil. My cousin flew across the room, knocking over the card table, crashing in a shower of cards and dollar bills.
“I ain’t no wet-behind-ear, snot-nosed brat,” Seth yelled. “I’m stronger than they would be. Closer to the Master. Much stronger.”
I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, but I believed him.
“Look, Seth,” I said. “We ain’t looking for trouble. Why don’t you just go on your way and leave us be?”