Vampirus (Book 1)

by Hamlyn, Jack

  He realized then that the pit must have served the entire county. That’s how it was being handled. Gripping a tree with one hand, scant precarious inches from the edge of the pit, he looked down into that raging, incinerating hell and all he could think was: mothers, sisters, daughters, sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins—

  It looked like a scene from Treblinka or Chelmo.

  His parka dusted with ash, face blackened by soot, his stomach roiling from the stench of cremation, he half-walked and half-stumbled down the hillside and through the woods. In his blind, manic flight, he tripped over stumps and fallen logs and thought more than once that he was asphyxiating on the stench. When he reached his truck, it was covered in a fine uniform layer of gray ash. In the rearview mirror, his face was so dark that all he could see were the staring, shocked whites of his eyes. He looked like a coal miner fresh from a deep, dirty seam.

  He drove down Hollow Creek Road in something of a traumatized daze, soot on his lips and tongue and down his throat. He could actually taste what they were burning in the plague pit. More than once he pulled over and shook with dry heaves.

  But it was only the beginning of that particularly dark day.

  As he got close to town, he saw something equally as disturbing and absolutely incomprehensible. On both sides of the road there were single-file trains of people, hunched-over like papery mantises, hair blowing in the wind, staring catatonic eyes punched like dark holes in their chalk-white faces. They paid no notice of him in their gloomy march. They were dressed, semi-dressed, and completely undressed, their skin bluing in the cold. They moved on in sluggish trains like sleepwalkers heading in the direction of the dump.

  There were hundreds of them.

  Can you give this a rational slant, too, Luke? he asked himself deep in the confines of his slow-humming brain. Can you wrap your brain around this, swallow it, ingest it, and vomit it up some perfectly mundane, perfectly logical reason for why these people are marching to the plague pits? Just another seriously skewed, fucked up symptom of Vampirus or is it something more? Are those roasting bodies a magnet to their demented, hysterical minds? A siren song that draws them closer to their own obscene Mecca where they can be closer to their god, the dark Lord of Plague Pits and Cremation and Empty Graves?

  But he couldn’t think anymore. He just could not think.

  Feeling something sinister in the air that was many hostile leagues beyond the plague itself, he could not stop shaking.

  28

  Later that day, when his mind began to work again, to drag itself from the slow and toxic cycle of self-destruction, Luke got out his battered green notebook and wrote the following:

  *This is a list of people I need to check on:

  1. Alger Stericki (haven’t heard from him in some time)

  2. the Pruitts (Doug was calling me every day, been weeks now)

  3. the VanDannings (unusually silent)

  4. The Skorenskas (I’m worried about Maddie and the triplets)

  5. The Moravecs

  6. The Corbetts

  7. The Laskas (even though Emil Laska is crazy)

  8. The Crossiks (if I have the guts)

  9. The Kings (not in the neighborhood, but fuck it)

  29

  On December 23rd, the hospital closed.

  After some 135 years of continuous service, Bayfield County Memorial Hospital closed its doors because most of the staff had fallen ill or left the area. Word had it that its load of patients were being either transferred to or under supervision of the Army Medical Corps.

  To Luke it was further evidence of the collapse of the system. Medically, Wakefield was now on its own. Not that he was surprised because hospitals were closing all over the country as the infrastructure imploded and the government fought to steady itself on its last legs.

  Things were bad. In fact, they were beyond bad.

  Cell phones were down, landlines barely operating. Local calls were one thing, but long distance was getting to be hit and miss.

  Luke stopped down at the garage and was grateful to find Stubby still manning his post. He said the Public Works Department now consisted of him, Milt Penny, and Johnny K. They only had one electrician left. Two guys working the water department and only three at the power plant.

  “The town will fold within the month, Luke, and there ain’t a thing you and I can do about it.”

  “What’s the city council planning on doing?”

  Stubby laughed. “There ain’t no city council. A couple of them left, but the others have died or are sick. Place is a fucking graveyard. No disrespect to you and your girls, of course. They were sweethearts, the both of them. I know what it’s like. My Marion went into the pit last month.”

  So, the way Luke was figuring it, either he went into survival mode here pretty quick or it was all over and his deathbed promise to Sonja wouldn’t amount to beans. And when he thought about what she had said, about him going on and giving their deaths meaning, he realized it was about the only thing stopping him from putting a shotgun in his mouth.

  Oh, baby, if you only knew what it’s like now. If you only knew.

  The Internet was spotty. Sometimes it was working and very often it was not. This is what he learned from it on those days when it was up and running:

  —the President was supposed to address the nation very soon.

  —cities in Europe were burning: Budapest, Hungary; Graz, Austria; Krakow, Poland; Bratislava in the Czech Republic. Dozens of others. No communication coming out of those places. CNN said it was probably arson.

  —The UK had sealed its borders; no one in or out; Wales was particularly hard hit; Luke saw a video on YouTube somebody shot in Cardiff—dump trucks (lorries, actually) heaped with corpses moving down a main thoroughfare. He counted twenty trucks. It looked like something out of the Black Death.

  —Chicago was practically a ghost town now; same for Boston, same for LA, same for Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Norfolk and Philly; Kansas City was a graveyard—unburied dead everywhere. Nobody was daring to go in there (especially after dark, they said on the message boards)

  —there were flies everywhere, even in northern cities. Not outside, of course, but infesting houses. Luke saw a pic of windows black with them. Again, a few flies might wake up in the winter on a sunny day, that wasn't unusual…but this many? It had to be connected. Somehow. He was killing dozens every day in his own house.

  —and speaking of vermin: people were saying rats were swarming everywhere. Some dude posted a feed from Times Square—no people, but hordes of rats running wild. There were so many at Broadway and 53rd you could have walked across them and never touched pavement.

  —and speaking of NY, twenty people disappeared on a subway train in Midtown Manhattan including the motorman.

  —similar incidences had occurred on the London Underground and the Paris Metro.

  That’s what he knew of the outside world.

  Things were happening everywhere and the world he’d known his whole life was crashing and burning. Sonja wanted him to go on, to keep fighting. But what did that mean now? Fight to survive, he supposed. But survive for what? What would the world be in six months or a year? A bird-picked bone heap?

  You made a promise, he told himself in no uncertain terms, and you will see that promise through. Get your back up and shit straight and do what has to be done. There’s going to be other survivors out there and Sonja would want you to help them. Start stockpiling and arming yourself. Get ready for the end. Survive it.

  Vampirus, of course, was bugging him.

  He could think of nothing else. That anthropologist on TV had said that historical pandemics were also times of vampire hysteria. You could go out on a dozen blogs or message boards, he knew, and read all the vampire stuff you wanted. Some of it was silly Mickey Mouse shit that would make you laugh (assholes with fake fangs, capes, and comic book names like Dread Sepultura and Crow Ravenwood saying it was their time, the children of the ni
ght), but some of it was disturbing. Things you could not laugh off. On the message boards, for example, people were not discussing vampires as folkloric creatures or speculating on their possible existence, they were certain they existed and that Vampirus was bringing them out of their graves. And for the most part they seemed like ordinary well-adjusted people, not a bunch of dipshit Goths with whiteface and black lipstick living some silly vampire fantasy (when they weren’t working the window at McDonalds, that was, or greeting people at Wal-Mart).

  And that’s what really disturbed him about it all.

  Things were happening and he knew they were happening, but it was not easy for him. He’d been a hard-headed agnostic his entire life. For him to believe in the walking dead was inconceivable…yet, he’d seen some things and heard about others that pushed him closer to belief. But he couldn’t go all the way. Not without proof and he feared that might be coming next. But the idea of his wife and daughter walking around out there somewhere…it was absolutely fucking obscene.

  One thing that was bothering him was that Alger had not been around.

  That was funny.

  Strange.

  Luke had called him a couple times but there had been no answer.

  Better take a walk over there, see what’s what, he told himself that evening.

  But then he looked out the window and changed his mind. It would wait until tomorrow. It would have to.

  It was dark out now.

  30

  He called Alger twice after first light, then went over there around ten and knocked. Nothing. The front door was locked, same for the back. He went home and drank for awhile, but he couldn’t stand it. The Jim Beam tasted like water and he couldn’t sit still and the reason for that was that he was worried about Alger, about the neighborhood, about the whole goddamn town.

  Around two, he went back over there.

  The door was still locked. On his tiptoes in the snowdrifts, Luke peeked in what windows he could, seeing nothing. He had a very bad feeling and planned on following it to its source, which meant getting in there somehow.

  Using a prybar (the same one Alger and he had used out at Salem Cross), he popped the front door open without damaging the lock itself. Soon as he stepped in, he was hit with a warm stink that nearly pushed him back out the door. It was sharp and pungent, like wine gone to vinegar. An absolutely unnatural smell.

  He called out Alger’s name a few times, but his voice just died away.

  There was something about the house that made him want to turn and run. The atmosphere was spoiled, noxious. He got that feeling in his gut like he’d had at the Crossik’s and The King’s: cold steel claws unfolding in his belly. He looked around and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary downstairs save a nearly full can of Budweiser sitting on the kitchen table next to a bologna-and-cheese sandwich with a single bite out of it. It looked like Alger was having a snack and a drink and had gotten called away suddenly. The bread was hard, the bologna darkening. Luke figured the sandwich was a couple days old. A few flies were investigating it. He saw three or four others on the kitchen window.

  He had to go upstairs then.

  Climbing those steps, he was reminded of going up them almost two weeks before when they’d taken Anne’s body to Salem Cross. The stairs creaked as he went up like someone was coming up behind him, but stairs often did that in old houses, he knew. Not that it stopped him from looking back and seeing the front door down there and how easy it would have been to escape.

  He reached the top of the stairs and there was a quick bumping sound from up there. He stopped. The dread was rising up from his belly, so thick in his throat he could not swallow. The silence was so heavy it was nearly palpable.

  “Alger?” he called out and the sound of his voice in that stillness almost made him run back down the stairs.

  There was no reply.

  He heard that bumping sound again.

  What he’d smelled downstairs was stronger up here, concentrated. It was enough to ream the hairs out of his nose, not just that sharp vinegary stink, but a putrid, flyblown kind of smell. He knew then as he’d known from the moment he stepped into the house that he was going to find something he would not like.

  It was cooler in the upstairs corridor, almost brisk. He heard that sound again and traced it down the hall to the spare bedroom. The door was lightly bumping against the jamb. He quickly went over to it so he could not second guess himself, and threw it open. It was empty but the window was open. The air was nearly glacial in there.

  Why the hell was the window open at this time of year? They’d had a high of nineteen degrees the day before.

  He stepped towards the window, very aware of how close he was to the closet door. At the window, he looked out at rooftops white with snow, icicles hanging from eaves, the trails of dark crematory smoke in the sky. Because of the overhang he hadn’t spotted the open window from below. If he leaned out at the proper angle, he could see his own footprints coming around the side of the house. The overhang was nearly covered in snow, but he saw that something had disturbed it. A bird. A pigeon maybe. That’s what he told himself.

  He shut the window and locked it.

  Alger must have been using the guest room, not wanting to sleep in the master bedroom after what happened with Anne and who could blame him? The bed was unmade, some empty beer cans and an overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. Luke told himself that was why the window was open, to clear out the smoke, but he was kidding himself and he knew it. Alger didn’t give a rat’s ass about his smoke and any non-smoker who dared comment on it was accused of being in the employ of the Tobacco Nazis.

  There was a reason why the window was open, but Luke wasn’t about to think about it any more than he was going to look in the closet.

  He found a book on the nightstand called The Harrow King and Other Wisconsin Folk-Tales. The author was H.R. Shanks, a.k.a. Hawley Shanks, the local weaver of wild ones. Luke stuck the book in the pocket of his coat. In the drawer, he found a Smith & Wesson .45 and a box of shells. He took these, too. The gun was a recent acquisition, he figured. He didn’t remember Alger ever having a gun before.

  He went down the hall, peeked in the bathroom, and pushed open the door to the master bedroom. Right away he wished he hadn’t. It was dim in there, the shade drawn. There was someone on the bed, a form covered with a sheet and nothing more. He could have left, but he knew that if he did he was going to be more haunted than he already was.

  His mouth was dry and his guts were desperately trying to crawl up the back of his throat. He could feel the beating of his own heart. The wind was moaning around the window, cold and rattling. If death ever sang a song, it would sound like December wind.

  Keeping an eye on the still form, Luke drew the shade up. It did little good; the outside pane was covered in ice and frost, a shadow of the chimney thrown over it. What light came in was weak and dirty yellow, like sunshine through cellophane.

  He took hold of the sheet and pulled it back.

  And as he did so, a cloud of flies rose from beneath it in a wave of sickening heat. He swatted them away.

  Anne was laying there.

  He nearly fell backwards at the shock of it, breath wheezing in his throat. His head filled with rushing blood and he knew there were only two possibilities and the rational, sane one was that Alger had fucking lost it and went out to Salem Cross and brought her back. Luke couldn’t conceive of him doing so, but grief can be weird and devastating, it can tear minds right open and he knew all about that. The other possibility was flying around in his skull with the sound of night-black wings and Luke refused to consider it.

  From a distance he gave Anne the once-over.

  She had not decayed really, but in the cold of the mortuary he supposed that wasn’t so surprising. Flies were still crawling over her face and neck. She was wearing the same royal blue gown she’d had on when he wrapped her up for the trip out to The Cross (of course she did). It was low-cut and one
pale breast had fallen out, the nipple a dull gray. He didn’t know what disturbed him more: her being there or the flies she had seemingly brought in the house with her.

  The ghostly white pallor of death was evident on her face and exposed skin, but her cheeks were ruddy, almost gaudy with a rose-pink vitality like a young girl experimenting with makeup for the first time. Her belly was swollen like that of Linda King. Her long white fingers were laced over it like women will do when they carry child. He didn’t know what she was carrying, but he had the feeling she was swollen with more than gas.

  He covered her back up, hoping she’d stay that way.

  He was numb by the time he got downstairs. He didn’t know what to think or even how to reason by that point. Everything he saw and—more importantly—felt was circumventing reality at every turn, pushing him farther into the darkness of superstition until he would have to admit the worst possible things to himself.

  He looked in the cellar and garage for Alger, but he wasn’t there. Not that Luke could see. But his real fear, of course, was that he was there, sleeping in some dark closet or cellar damp, hidden from view.

  31

  In his green notebook that night Luke wrote:

  Here’s something that keeps me from sleeping. That YouTube video my sister sent me, the one that showed those…individuals walking the streets during a snowstorm in some little Utah town. Well, get this. I checked my mail (the Internet being my only real connection with the world) and there was a frantic message from Peggy to check the video. No problem. I had downloaded it. Here’s what keeps me awake: those figures on the video are gone. The feed shows nothing but snow falling on empty streets, nothing else. Even that close-up of the freaky “girl” at the end is gone.