by Cullen Bunn
I tried the phone. Static caterwauled at me.
“One thing for sure,” Sue said. “We can’t stay here. It isn’t safe. Maybe we’re no safer outside, but I’d rather risk it.”
“The next closest phone would be at the Miles place,” Jack said. “We can call for help, maybe reach the state police.”
I should have guessed he’d be eager to suggest the Miles place. That way, he’d be able to check on Cordelia. He was right about their phone being the closest, though, and they owned a working car.
“That’s still quite a walk in the dark,” I said. “I’m not saying we can’t make it, but we’re all worn out and scared already, and I want everyone to know this might not be easy.”
Sue nodded, and I knew Jack had already made up his lovesick mind.
“All right, then.” I yanked my broomstick out of Seth’s corpse. The stake tugged Seth right along with it, then the body flopped back, the stake making a slurping sound as it pulled from the meat. “ For what it’s worth, we have a plan. Let’s get moving.”
“What will we tell the state police anyway?” Sue asked.
“Anything,” I answered, “as long as it gets them here.”
We stepped out into the night again.
Only this time, it was darker. Colder.
* * *
The dirt road stretched out before us, a stripe of pale stone and gravel cutting through the shadow. If I’d walked the trail once, I’d walked it a thousand times, but it seemed more unfamiliar. Trees I had seen since I was boy now looked strange, and each footstep felt uncertain, as if the whole world might give out and fall apart beneath my feet.
Looking back, I could no longer see Cecil’s place. It was lost in the night. With every step, I felt as though I was leaving my life—the life I’d known for so long—behind, never to return. No more funning with my cousin. No more weekly poker games. No more Cold Creek beer. No more—
“A car!” Sue gasped and dashed off.
Sure enough, a 1972 Ford Galaxie wagon sat on the side of the dirt road. The extinguished globes of the headlights winked at us as we approached.
“Shit,” Jack said. “That’s Doc Bishop’s car.”
The outside of the car was beat up, the trunk, roof, and hood crumpled, the doors battered in. The windows were smashed, the glass broken in spider web designs. The inside looked as if someone had let a souped-up chainsaw loose upon the seats, the dash, the floorboards, and the driver. The seat cushions were slashed, the dash busted. Blood coated the windshield and soaked into the upholstery.
“He must have encountered another of those creatures,” Sue said.
Poor Doc Bishop.
As we searched the car, a high-pitched cackling noise echoed through the darkness. Another eerie cry answered. Then another.
“What’s that sound?” Sue asked. “It’s awful.”
“Coyotes,” I said.
The yipping of the coyotes erupted from the brush again, closer now, as the coyotes inspected our presence.
“If those vampires can control spiders,” Sue asked, “what’s to stop them from sending coyotes after us?”
“She’s right,” Jack said. “In the movies, Dracula controlled wolves. Hell, he could turn into one. Maybe those draculas turned into coyotes.”
“I don’t reckon a vampire can control a coyote,” I said. “Way I see it, coyotes are about the oldest tricksters in the world. They may be animals, but they ain’t dumb, and they’re too crafty to let themselves be controlled by anyone.”
My companions seemed satisfied by the answer, but from the shadows, the coyotes laughed at my reasoning.
* * *
In another ten minutes, we reached the home of Cordelia Miles and her parents, Arthur and Rebecca. Lights shone through the windows, but the car wasn’t in the gravel driveway. The familiar knot of ice in my gut told me we wouldn’t like what we found, but I mouthed a prayer as I trudged across the yard.
Funny. I became more and more religious as the night wore on.
Jack shuffled past me like one of his matinee monsters on a rampage, hunched over and covered in dried blood, grunting as he climbed the steps to the front porch, calling for anyone to answer him. He wrenched open the screen door, and it almost came loose from its hinges. The front door trembled as he pounded his meaty palm against it.
“They’ve been here, too,” Sue said, too quiet for Jack to hear, but her words were like cannon fire in my head.
Jack rushed through the door without a care as to what dangers awaited.
Shit. What could I do but follow?
In the front hall, I found the phone, the handset dangling from the stand to the floor. Grabbing the curling cord, I whipped the receiver up and put it to my ear. The line was dead.
We found Arthur Miles in the living room. A pool of gore spread around the rocking chair where he sat. His eyes were half open, and he sort of smiled when he saw us. Most of his teeth had been broken, and bits of bone and grit clung to his bloody gums. His throat was a ruined mess.
“I thought … at first … you were one of them come back to … finish me.”
“Try to relax,” Sue said. She looked around the room for something to stop the bleeding. “Help me find some towels or something.”
“Too late for that,” Mr. Miles said. “I’m a goner. Surprised I made it this long.”
Jack stomped through the house, shouting for Cordelia. I wanted to call for her, too, but I knew it would do no good. Jack threw open every door, checked every possible hiding spot. Finding nothing, he returned and asked, “Where’s Cordelia?”
“Gone. Her and her mother both They got away while I held those … monsters back.” Mr. Miles grabbed Sue’s arm. “I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. It was the Whateleys.”
The Whateleys?
“I recognized their oldest boy. Only they were … changed. And . . . and I think I saw some of the Stubbs with them!”
So that meant they’d been afflicted with the same ailments the Stubbs had suffered. And they had the Stubbs with them. The Stubbs and the Whatleys working together—maybe the world was coming to an end after all.
With a trembling hand, Mr. Miles pulled a wrinkled chewing tobacco pouch from his shirt. He took a dip and savored it. “Wife didn’t like me doing this … but no sense in worrying about it … now.” Tears welled in his eyes. Tobacco juice oozed from between his lips.
Jack approached the dying man. “R.F., why don’t you take a load off your feet for a couple of minutes. If it’s all right, I want to talk to Mr. Miles a bit.” He squatted next to the chair and spoke to Mr. Miles in a whisper.
I slouched down along the far wall. I just needed to rest. Five minutes. No more.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Sue said. She glanced over at Jack. “About your friends.”
“I am too.”
She sat down next to me. Close. She smelled of fresh sweat.
“And I’m sorry about the way I acted when you returned from the Stubbs place. It … it must have been awful, what you saw there … what you had to do. I just didn’t understand.”
Words seemed to jump out of my mouth. I was so tired, I hardly thought about what I was saying. “I understand. I jumped to some conclusions, too. I saw that record and I wanted to snap Cecil in two.” Too late, I realized what I said. Suddenly wide awake, I looked up at Sue.
She tilted her head curiously. The corner of her mouth curled. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, blushing. “Forget it.”
“Oh, come on. After all we’ve been through tonight, you might as well tell me.”
I sighed. “It’s just that Cecil always played Don Williams music when courting a lady.”
“And that upset you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess it did.”
She nodded and looked away. Rosy circles colored her cheeks.
“Reckon it shouldn’t have bothered me none,” I said. “A girl like you wouldn’t consider
going out with one of us country bumpkins anyway.”
She drew her legs up and looked at me. “This is probably something we should talk about later. I think it’s just the wrong time to even think about such things, you know?”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Wasn’t a “no” at least.
“You planning on taking them back to that fancy college as part of your research?” I said, looking at the bottom of her sandals, where the crushed remains of several tarantulas still clung, despite the hike. “I doubt your fellow spider scientists will look kindly on such reckless tarantula stomping.”
She smiled. “Screw you, okay?”
“Promises, promises.”
We left it at that, pulled our lazy asses up, and checked on Mr. Miles. Jack squeezed the old man’s hand, whispered something else, and stood up. Mr. Miles’ eyes were red and watery as he looked at us.
“We’re going to try to get to town,” Sue told him. “Try to get some help.”
For some reason, when she said that, it sounded like a bad joke.
Mr. Miles hacked like he was coughing out a piece of gristle lodged in his windpipe.
“Go get my guns. You’ll need them. They’re in the hall closet.”
In the hall closet, we found a couple of Winchester rifles, a Smith & Wesson hand cannon, and a 12-guage.
“You fellas take my guns,” Mr. Miles said. “Just leave one here to—” He shot a glance at Jack. “—defend myself.”
Something bumped and thundered above us. Footsteps. On the roof.
“There’s one of them out there,” Jack said, looking up.
Brandishing my pistol, I rushed out, just in time to see a figure leap from the roof of the house and into the trees. I heard the swooping and shuffling through brush as the figure ran off into the night.
Jack and Sue joined me outside, watching the trees.
Inside, a shot rang out.
* * *
When we reached town, we discovered a nightmare.
If I’d heard the popping of machinegun fire and the rattling grind of tank treads, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Main Street looked like something straight out of newsroom footage of a third-world country invasion.
Overturned cars. Broken storefront windows. Trash littering the street.
Bodies.
And there was the difference. On the news, the footage of war-torn cities showed strangers, but like I said, in Spider Creek we’re all neighbors, and each mauled body wore a familiar face.
Nothing moved, except for fleeting banks of night fog.
A ghost town.
Usually, this time of early morning, the smell of cooking griddlecakes and sizzling bacon from the Redeye Diner wafted through the street. Instead, the stink of death loomed over the place like a big top tent of some madhouse circus.
The street was littered with spider carcasses. The phone lines had fallen, heavy with spiders, and power lines sizzled and writhed across the street, sparkling like electric serpents. Blood smeared the pavement, glistening. More than a couple of badly-mauled bodies lay upon the street.
At the intersection of Main Street and Lee, my heart sank. Lee Street ascended a hill beyond the Post Office and family store, directly into a residential area.
The people of Spider Creek would have been asleep when the vampires attacked.
The houses were dark and quiet. More than a couple of doors stood open, some ripped right off the hinges, even though I doubted they’d been locked in the first place.
“If they were attacked by vampires, they’re going to come back as vampires themselves, right?”
Jack said nothing, just stood there, chewing his lip.
“Right?” Sue asked again.
He snapped out of his daze and looked at her with watery eyes.
“Jack,” she said, “are they going to come back, too?”
He nodded. “I reckon they might.”
The vampires were spreading like a disease. If we didn’t stop them somehow, who would? What stood between them and the entire world?
“What do we need to do?” Sue asked.
He didn’t need to answer. We all knew what need doing.
We climbed the steps into each house, and in almost every house, we found a horror. By the time we finished, we were covered in blood as heavy as syrup, the salty taste on our lips.. Not a vampire or soon-to-be vampire remained.
Except for Jack.
“It’s so dark,” he said, looking at the crimson stains upon his hands. “Not like the movies.”
The front of the Presbyterian church was defiled with splashes of blood, but the doors were intact, the stained glass window unbroken. The sign out front read Know God. Know Peace. I sure could use some peace of mind. I crossed the lawn, climbed the steps to the front doors, and put my ear against the wood.
“They wouldn’t be able to go in there,” Jack said. “Holy ground.”
But I heard sounds within. Voices. Crying. I pulled open the door—
And stared down the cavernous barrel of a .45.
“Don’t fucking move,” a high-pitched voice commanded.
Behind the woman holding the gun, a child’s voice whispered in the dark. “Did you hear what she said? She said the F word.”
Living children.
Holding my hands up, I tilted my head and looked around the barrel. “Evening, Annie. You want to get this gun out of my face?”
“R.F.?” the frazzled police dispatcher said. “What are you doing here?”
“Right now I’m wishing you’d put this gun away.”
She reluctantly lowered the weapon. Without the threat of a bullet between the eyes taking all my attention, I saw several kids in the church, huddled together and scared, but alive.
Sue and Jack joined me inside, and we pulled up a pew and listened to Annie tell us of the last moments of Spider Creek.
“They attacked not too long after you called,” Annie said. “Never saw anything like it. They were so fast, so vicious. I was able to get a few of the kids rounded up. One of them came up with the idea of hiding in the church. Said we were being attacked by vampires.”
“Smart kid,” Jack said. “May have saved your ass.”
“W-what’s happening?” Annie asked. She sagged against me. Her body trembled.
A screeching cry echoed through the hills.
“What the hell is that? It sounds like the noise Seth was making when he called the spiders… only worse.”
Jack had broken out in a cold sweat. His flesh was pallid.
“It’s him. The master. He’s calling us … all the others to him. To him, we’re nothing but lower creatures, like the spiders were to Seth.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can feel him. He’s afraid. He’s afraid of us. He knows what we’ve done to the Stubbs children and to Seth. He’s connected to us. He’s never had anyone destroy one of his brood before. He’s powerful, but he’s not foolish. He’s scared of us.”
“Jack,” I said, “are you saying he’s called all the vampires to one place?”
He nodded.
“And you know where?”
“Yeah.” He licked his lips and swallowed. “He’s calling me, too.”
“The sun will be up soon, and we’ll have daylight on our side,” I said. “If we stop them now, we’ll be able to get them all at one time. Where are they going?”
“The Whatley place.”
I turned to Sue. She must have known what I was about to ask, because she started shaking her head before I even got the words out.
“No,” she said. “I’m staying with you.”
“You can’t. I need you to find a way to West Plains to get help. There’s bound to be a car you can use around here somewhere.”
“What about her?” she nodded to Annie.
“The children need her here.”
“Come with me then,” Sue said.
I wanted to go with her more than anything, but I
knew better.
“If this thing keeps spreading, we’re looking at Hell on Earth. Jack and I are gonna try to put an end to it by killing the Master. You’ve got to get help, though, in case we don’t make it. Besides, there might be other survivors.”
“So why not wait to kill this master vampire once we get help?”
“Because we can’t even be sure the authority’s will believe you. Besides, we don’t have time to wait.”
I knew a thing or two about vampires, too, although I never put much thought into it. Hell, you can’t hardly turn on the TV late at night without seeing a vampire movie. If Hollywood was right, we might be able to save Jack. If we could kill the master before Jack turned, maybe he wouldn’t turn at all.
“And if the movies are wrong?”
“Then at least I’ll be able to get a little payback for Cecil. We got these vampires scared. That means we can hurt them. We can kill them.”
Suddenly, Sue grabbed hold of my shirt collar and pulled me to her, planting a kiss on me that damn near blew the boots off my feet. I ain’t ashamed to say I felt as warm and tingly as a school boy sneaking his first kiss beneath the bleachers, and when she pulled away, I just sort of stood there, still puckered up and stammering.