by Alan Ryker
By that time she’d slid across the floor and put her shoulders to the wall. Her vision had begun to clear and she knew how to fight a vampire from her back. A vampire had super-human strength, but only regular human weight. Less, even, because they were usually shrimps. When it jumped in, you tossed it back with your legs. And they were as wary of boots flying heel first at their teeth as anything would be. It wasn’t ideal, but it gave you the time to draw your pistol and end things.
But Jessica didn’t want to end things quite yet. Shooting the vampire now would feel like failure. She didn’t want the battle to end that way. Instead, she flipped the stun gun into her hand and pulled the trigger. Electricity arced and the device began its horrible ticking, and the vampire stepped back.
As Jessica watched, the wound on the vampire’s stomach began to close, almost as if invisible hands zippered the wound shut from either end. Jessica wanted her machete. The thing was too fast to fight with a knife. As they watched each other, Jessica drew her pistol, aimed it at the vampire’s chest, and fired.
The hollow-point, .40 caliber bullet had stopping power. The vamp staggered, then scrambled away, clawing at the walls. Jessica holstered her gun, got to her feet and dove for her machete. Her head hadn’t cleared as much as she’d thought and she tumbled on it and rolled over. The vampire was coming.
Jessica stood, but without the machete. As the vampire rushed in, she jabbed it in the mouth. Fangs snapped on her metal fist, and though the jolt went up her arm into her shoulder, the vampire stopped short. It didn’t seem to remember that that’s how humans fought.
A moment later, it grabbed for her. It didn’t want to fist fight. It wanted to hold her still while it tore her throat out. Jessica caught it with a jab and then a cross. It kept coming and she hooked it in the jaw and then slammed an uppercut up under its chin. She smiled as its fangs splintered and fell out. Combinations like that were extremely difficult to land on a sparring partner, because sparring partners tried to not get hit. The vampire moved faster than anything she’d seen, but it came straight at her like Frankenstein’s monster.
She realized that she should have stuck with straight punches, not letting it get inside as she winged hooks. It grabbed her and looked confused. With her mask and high collar, it didn’t seem to know where to bite. She clinched up with it, wrapping her arms around its neck and driving her knee into its guts, hoping it still hurt where she’d twisted the machete around.
She tried to shove off, but it pulled her in with undeniable strength. She tried to headbutt it, but it slid its fangs over the goggles of her helmet. As blood and venom blurred her vision, the vamp got more frantic.
It still didn’t know how to bite her.
It began slamming its mouth into her face. If it felt its lips splitting around its fangs, it didn’t let on. It smashed over and over until the thick plastic started to crack. Jessica stopped trying to kickbox the vampire. It was ridiculous. Blind, she flipped her stun gun into her hand and jammed it into the monster’s side. The vampire stumbled back and Jessica drew her pistol. She could barely see through the gore covering her pulverized mask. She just put her back against the wall and started shooting at movement.
The vampire roared and she drew a bead on its blur and fired. It shrieked and she knew she’d hit it. Tearing desperately at her helmet with her left hand, she fired blindly with her right. The gun kicked hard, and she knew she wasn’t hitting anything, but she hoped only to keep the vampire away.
Jessica forced herself calm, and while she rhythmically popped off rounds in random directions she worked at her helmet's latches with her left hand.
Then the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
She holstered the pistol and held out the stun gun instead. The vamp had gotten two tastes of it and shouldn’t have been in a hurry to get anymore. She’d shocked herself with it once and never wanted to feel that sort of pain again.
Jessica waved the stun gun around and set it off at intervals, not wanting to drain the battery before she got herself free of the damn helmet. Luckily, she found it much easier to concentrate on the straps she’d so carefully tightened without a .40 caliber gun jumping in her hand.
She finally got the straps undone. Just as she pulled the helmet off and threw it aside, the door opened. The kid on the other side looked very surprised as a vampire charged him.
Chapter 4
“This is it,” Kroger said as they bounced down the gravel road. He leaned up from the back. “This is Jessica’s house.”
Tony nodded as he flipped off his headlights and pulled into the driveway. Darkness had only just fallen, anyway.
He stopped at the far end of the long driveway and killed the engine.
“Are you sure we have to do this?” Kroger asked, dropping back against the seat. “Maybe we can just scare her away.” His stomach churned, and he felt very close to puking.
“That bitch killed my cousin—”
“You never gave a fuck about Dennis before,” Kroger said.
“And I don’t plan on having her hiding in the shadows plotting to kill me, too.”
“We don’t even know for sure that she did it. That’s just the rumor.”
“Shut up!” Randall shouted. He spun around and glared at Kroger. “We’re going to have some fun with her, and then we’re going to kill her, and that’s all there is to it.”
Kroger opened his mouth to speak, but his guts twisted and he scrambled for the door handle. His mouth filled with vomit, and he barely got the door open and leaned outside before it forced its way out.
Randall and Tony laughed as Kroger spit. Tears filled his eyes from the force of puking, but they threatened to continue from fear.
“Listen dude, you’re no killer. Nothing to be ashamed of. Not too much, anyway. But this is going to help.” Randall held up a glass pipe and a Zippo. He heated the glass, then took a long hit. Kroger watched his eyes go strange.
“What is that?” Kroger asked.
“Speed. This'll turn a kitten into a tiger. You wouldn’t believe the crazy shit I’ve done on this.” Randall offered the pipe to Tony who waved it away.
“You know I can’t function like that,” Tony said. He took a revolver from the glove box. “Besides, I don’t need it. This is my thing.”
Randall nodded, took another hit and passed the pipe back to Kroger.
“I don’t do this stuff.”
“You do now, bro.” Randall looked normal except for the huge pupils vibrating slightly in his otherwise dead eyes. He held the lighter for Kroger.
Dogs were already barking before Tony threw open the unlocked front door, but they went nuts afterwards. Kroger held the revolver Tony had given him out and trained it back and forth.
“Chill out before you kill somebody,” Randall said after listening for a second. “The dogs are locked up.”
Kroger couldn’t believe how dry his mouth was. He couldn’t believe how good he felt. His anxieties were all gone, completely forgotten. He felt strong.
“Wait here,” Randall said as he closed the door. “Keep a look out while we search the house. I don’t think she’s here.”
“But her truck and car are both here,” Kroger said.
“Shut up.”
Randall and Tony moved away quickly. Kroger stayed near the front door and looked over the gun. He liked it. It had been a long time since he’d held one of his dad’s. He’d forgotten how heavy they were. And this was a big one. Tony was a big guy, so that made sense. It looked massive compared to Kroger’s small hands and thin wrists.
He needed to start lifting or something. Bulk up. Drink protein shakes. Then Stacy’d be down to fuck. Then he’d be beating the women off with a stick.
Yeah right, he’d be screwing them all. Every one of them.
That made him think of Jessica, with her long, long legs. Randall said they’d have fun with her. He knew what that meant, but he didn’t know about it. He didn’t know.
But she had those
legs and those perfect little titties and now she was kind of scary and awesome like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. All ripped like that and intense.
“House is clear. Oh my God,” Tony started laughing as he came down the stairs. “Look what’s up with your boy, Randall.”
Randall didn’t laugh. He looked way beyond laughter. “You getting gay on us? What the fuck?” He gestured at Kroger’s crotch.
Kroger realized that he had a massive erection tenting out his basketball shorts.
“Fuck you,” Kroger said. He had to stop thinking of Jessica. He remembered the gun in his hand and instead imagined popping Randall, peeling his cap right back, putting his brains on the wall. It didn’t help his erection. Weird. Weird.
“I’m saying right now that you get thirds,” Tony said, still laughing. “So what now?” he asked Randall.
“She’s gotta show up sometime, and we’ll have the drop on her. Pull your car into that big car port. We’ll wait outside. I can’t hear shit over those damn dogs.”
The dogs. They were loud. Somehow, Kroger had forgotten about them. Then it was like someone un-muted the volume and the barking and baying came back.
They stepped outside, and gunshots started popping off.
Randall dropped into a crouch, then turned and looked at Kroger, who stood stock upright.
“What the hell?”
“It’s coming from over there,” Kroger said, pointing. “From that metal grain thing.”
“Standing there like a fucking moron,” Randall said, but he started jogging towards the silo. Tony and Kroger followed.
The western sky still glowed a bit red. Kroger could hear the dogs barking in the house. The cicadas and crickets, though, were quiet.
Holes appeared in the steel of the silo, and Kroger watched Randall and Tony crouch as they went.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Randall asked.
“I don’t know, man. This is weird. Maybe we should go,” Tony said.
Kroger just stood and watched holes appearing in the steel. Green light glowed out of them.
“Fuck that,” Randall said. “We finish this now.”
The gunfire stopped. Randall started creeping toward the door of the grain silo.
Kroger didn’t move. “Give me another hit,” he said.
“What?” Randall asked.
“I need another hit.”
“Shut up and get to that door.”
“No.” Kroger stood where he was. The buzzing in his ears was growing louder. He looked up the barrel of Randall’s Ruger, but the green pinpoints of light were more interesting.
“He’s freaking out,” Tony said. “Take that gun from him.”
Kroger noticed Randall again, staring down his 9mm Ruger at him. Randall’s face was so vacant. It struck Kroger that this was what Randall was built to do.
“No. I like it,” Randall said. He fished into the cargo pocket of his shorts and pulled out the pipe and lighter. He held the pipe out with one hand, the lighter with the other, and walked toward Kroger as if with a sacred offering.
Kroger felt mesmerized by the black pit pupils of Randall's eyes. He watched as Randall held the pipe up to his lips, then heated the bulb for him.
“Take your hit. But not too much, or you’ll die.”
Kroger breathed in deeply, then nearly fell on his ass. Randall tossed the pipe aside and slapped Kroger on the shoulder.
“We good?”
“We’re real good,” Kroger said. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he wanted to do it bad. The gun in his hand got heavier.
He ran to the silo.
“Hold up,” one of them hissed after him. He didn’t know which. He grabbed the heavy handle and twisted it, then threw the door wide open.
He didn’t understand the scene before him, but somehow that made perfect sense. He absorbed it all at once.
Green glow sticks lit the inside of the silo. There was no grain. Instead, Jessica stood there like something out of a wet dream. Sweat poured down her face and soaked her hair. She wore this weird armor and had weapons strapped all over her body. In one hand, she held a stun gun that crackled with blue light, pulsating the dull green with lightning strobes. Her jaw was set, her brow knit. She was splattered with blood, and a small stream of it trickled from a cut on her forehead down her temple, past her ear and around her square, grinding jaw.
Across from her stood a thing. A monster. A nightmare. It looked at him with its solid black eyes and it roared. The sound thrummed in the metal silo like a jet engine from the shows at the Air Force base in Wichita that his uncle used to take him to. The metal shook with it, buzzed with it.
Then the creature moved. And it was more of a nightmare than Kroger had imagined even a moment before. It swung its arms down and its claws literally dug into the concrete as it hurled itself at him. As it closed the distance, Kroger thought of nature shows about the deep ocean. The strange, green light. The way the creature moved like one of those giant spider crabs, so alien that the mind almost refused to comprehend it, like the fits and starts in its progress were empty spaces that couldn't be remembered because they could not be imprinted on human consciousness. The thing roared and its spiny teeth and expanding mouth were like some sort of eel or ancient fish that lived in a trench and never saw light. The mouth got bigger and bigger until it became the trench. Jessica shouted his name, but it was too late. Kroger fell into the darkness.
Chapter 5
Jessica felt frozen in place. It took only a few seconds for her to recover, but existence was moving at such a quick pace that within those few seconds, everything changed.
Moments before, the entire world had been a slab of concrete encased in steel. The only occupants of that reality were herself and a stinking vampire that she had finished toying with. She’d learned what she needed from it. She’d punished it. And she was going to stop playing around, blow its brains out, chop off its head, drag it outside, douse it in gasoline and burn it in a brush pile where its bones would lay until morning when the sun would finish it off.
She understood that world. It had somehow become the world she’d grown used to. And then Kroger threw open the door on it, and the normal world intruded.
Before she could do anything but say Kroger’s name, the vampire had jumped on him, torn his head halfway off and tossed him back into the silo on its way out of it. Jessica stared at the twisted heap of little Kroger’s body. The skate rat had been her friend once.
When the screaming started, she sprinted for the door.
Outside, two men lay bleeding and twitching in the grass. She recognized one as Randall. She’d only seen him once before, but he had the kind of face you remembered, even when half of it had been bitten off.
She grabbed him and dragged him into the silo.
When she found the head of the second man, she didn’t think she recognized him. She knew how the face changed when the head was removed from the body. Her uncle hadn't looked at all the same after she'd chopped his head off. But she thought she wouldn’t have known this man anyway. He was probably one of Randall’s friends from Wichita.
She tossed his head into the silo, then dragged his body after. He was big. Almost too big for her to move. The door of the silo didn’t sit flush with the ground. It took her a long time to get him inside, and with every passing second, panic grew in her heart until she stomped and kicked the overgrown bastard in frustration.
The vampire was loose. The beast she had nurtured from a frail parasite into a killing machine ran free in the world, and from the way it had treated her, she knew it would kill unless she could find it very quickly.
She experienced the guilt and fear she felt over her dead family, but grown, like her pet vampire. Fed over the past year on futile vengeance and stupid games.
When she finally had the men’s bodies in the silo, she grabbed her machete. She stood over Randall and spun the huge blade absentmindedly. He still breathed. He would survive. He would
turn. She should cut his head off.
But she’d found their guns in the grass. It was like Sheriff Wheeler had said; they were after her. They’d come to kill her, and probably worse. They’d even brought along poor, stupid little Kroger.
She’d just told herself she was done with games, but Randall was still alive when she closed and padlocked the heavy steel door. Decapitation was an easy way to die, and she couldn’t bring herself to give him that mercy.
Jessica heard her dogs barking and could barely believe that those bastards hadn’t killed them. She knew it was only because they couldn’t be bothered to. If she hadn’t locked them up, they would have exterminated her dogs like bugs. The thought nearly made her sick.
She went upstairs to tend to her wounds, and was shocked by her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She was drenched from forehead to knees in the blood of that big, decapitated corpse she’d wrestled into the silo. She marveled at the blank expression on her face, even as her brain spun inside her skull. Not even her eyes gave a clue to the panic inside.
She washed the blood from her face and looked again. A huge bruise had already started on her left cheekbone where the vampire had backhanded her. The monster had also opened a cut above her right eye when it tried to ram its way through her mask. She couldn’t see the brow bone, but she didn’t doubt that it was a close thing. Thank God the mask had held and none of the creature’s venom had made it into the gaping wound or she’d be eating a shotgun instead of trying to clean up her own stupid mess.
She pulled the rattlesnake rattle from inside her vest and kissed it. With the ritual completed and the proper gods thanked, she grabbed her panic and swallowed it. And then her mind matched her face. Battered, but blank.
The cut needed stitches, but she didn’t have time. She flushed it with alcohol, then filled it with antibacterial ointment and applied butterfly stitches, and finally superglued everything together. It was almost certain to get very infected, so she swallowed some antibiotics and ibuprofen.