Vampirus (Book 1)

by Hamlyn, Jack

  Feeling impossibly tense, Luke threw the door open and turned on the light. Megan’s sheet was spread out on the floor. Bob sniffed it and jumped back, growling. Luke just stood there staring at it, wondering how it had gotten in there.

  But he knew.

  God yes, he knew.

  He could see where a dirty body had laid upon it leaving a gray imprint. There were a scattering of dead flies in the folds. Not Sonja or Megan as he’d first thought, but Anne. Anne Stericki had been hiding in his basement up until quite recently.

  She wanted you to find this. She wanted you to see this. It’s all part of the game. Hide-‘n’-seek. Catch me if you can. She wanted you to know that she’s one step ahead of you and always will be.

  Luke just sighed. All those many nights she could have had him, but it wasn’t time yet and it wasn’t part of the game. Anne wanted to build his fear and apprehension until he got confused and disoriented, then her success would be that much sweeter when she bit into his throat and drained him. In life, she had played anagrams, Sodokus, and mathematical puzzles; in death, she played people. She was a stalking feline and the game, the hunt, stealth and concealment and the final kill, were everything to her.

  You dirty, stinking bitch. You’re time is coming.

  “C’mon, Bob,” he said. “Enough of this.”

  Together, they went up the stairs and Luke watched happily as his new friend wolfed down a can of Alpo. They were going to be a team, a very successful team, and he knew it.

  48

  But first there was the Corbett house and what waited there.

  Bob knew something was up. He stuck very close to Luke’s side the later in the day it became. Maybe it was the coming night and the fear he held of it, but Luke figured he knew something was up. Border Collies were known for their intelligence and Bob was probably even a bit smarter than most. His instincts were exceptional. About an hour before sunset, Luke took him out to the garage and made a nice bed for him out of a sleeping bag. Bob hung his head and dragged his ass all the way out there. Luke lit a fire in the little woodstove for him. The garage was well insulated and he would be warm out there until dawn, if it came to that. He opened another can of food for him and left out plenty of water.

  Bob sat on the sleeping bag with that sad look in his eyes.

  Hell, it was more than his eyes but his whole body. Every inch of him was slouched and melancholy. He kept eyeing Luke, moving his brow up and down in the way dogs do that gives the impression of eyebrows. In Bob’s case, it seemed more than an impression. The dog was sad and disturbed. He seemed to know exactly what Luke was up to and he feared it. He kept whimpering in a very distraught sort of way.

  “Don’t worry, Bob,” Luke told him. “I’ll be back.”

  I just hope I can still walk in the daylight.

  In the house, he packed what he would need in a nylon duffel: several two-foot pine stakes, his hatchet, the short-handled four-pound sledgehammer, Alger’s .45, two flashlights, and several candles. He threw in a couple bottles of water just in case and then he was ready.

  On a whim, he stopped by the Stericki house and gave it a quick once over to see if Anne was about. He didn’t have time to check the attic. Anne had a little digital voice recorder and he took that with to keep a record of what he was doing.

  Finally, he crossed the street to the Corbett’s house.

  A light snow was coming down and the temperature hung at a near-constant 20° Fahrenheit. He was more worried about Bob than himself. He had originally thought of bringing him with, but if Cliff did indeed rise, the last thing he needed was Bob getting protective and attacking him. Luke had a pretty good idea that a vampire could quite easily gut a dog if they were threatened.

  He stepped into the Corbett house and checked it out room by room by room to make sure that if anything woke up at sunset it would only be Cliff. One would be more than enough to handle.

  Satisfied, he locked all the doors and secured all the windows. It wouldn’t stop them, but it made him feel better. He turned on every light in the house because unnecessary shadows he did not need.

  Finally, he went up to Cliff’s bedroom.

  Nothing had changed. He set his bag down, took out a hammer and stake and set them on the table along with the hatchet and .45. Then he got comfortable and played around with Anne’s digital recorder until he figured out how to work it. It was voice-activated and that was exactly what he wanted.

  He checked his watch, then started talking: “I made a promise to you, Sonja, and here’s where I really start keeping it. I don’t think you would approve of what I’m about to do, but I need intelligence and there’s only one way to get it, my darling. I’ve already watched one of them die, so I know the direct sunlight thing does indeed kill them just like in the old movies and those books I’ve been reading by that kook Montague Summers. Tonight, will be an acid test. I hope nothing happens, but I got this funny feeling that something will.”

  He paused and sipped some water. He reached into his pocket and found a pack of cigarettes that had belonged to Alger. He hadn’t smoked in the five years before Vampirus hit, then he started again, sporadically. Sonja would have been pissed. But he needed something to mellow him out. Bad as they were, the nicotine had a way of keeping your mind sharp and your body awake.

  Pulling off his cigarette and exhaling, he said, “Okay, Sonja. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, sunset here in this part of Wisconsin is 4:45 pm. That means by 5:15 it should be full dark out. There’s no twilight this time of year as you know. Day dies quickly and night drops in its place. It’s now 4:12 pm. Even with the lights on, the shadows are growing thick. It’s hard to talk like this when you can barely even swallow. Scared? Yeah, I’m fucking petrified.”

  A few more swigs of water, then a few drags off his cigarette. “This is a really stupid time to bring this up, but as a kid I was afraid of vampires and werewolves and all that shit. I had a cousin—Jimmy? You remember Jimmy? He got drunk at our wedding and puked on your aunt—who was into all that scary shit. Monsters and horror movies and Stephen King and all that weird stuff. I loved Jimmy because he was funny. Funny as all hell. What I didn’t like were sleepovers at his house because we’d always have to watch horror shows. Gah. I dreaded them. I’d have awful nightmares about Frankenstein hiding in my closet and Dracula walking around up on the roof. Sounds silly, I know, but it wasn’t silly back then. Christ. I remember when we’d go Trick-or-Treating, there was this house where these two girls always dressed up like vampires. They were older than us, teenagers. They’d wear the white gowns, put in the fangs, paint their faces white, smear blood all over their mouths. It was just a lark for them but they fucking TERRIFIED me. I used to be afraid to look out my bedroom window on Halloween night because I thought they’d be out there waiting for me. Of course, Jimmy…hah, he’d always make sure we got there at goddamn sundown. Christ, why am I even talking about shit like this?”

  He stopped blabbing on and on. He had to calm down and face this entire thing rationally and scientifically. In those old movies Jimmy always insisted they watch at midnight, Van Helsing was never afraid. He was always one cool customer. You never saw Peter Cushing freaking out. He was always on top of things. Though Luke liked to keep his smoking down to three cigarettes or less a day, he had another one.

  “It’s 4:29 now. The shadows are getting very long. It’s still pretty light out, but it won’t last much longer. It’s taking everything I have right now not to gather up my stuff and run right out of here. Poor Bob. He’s all alone. How could I leave him all alone after what he went through last night? I’m chain-smoking now and that’s not doing me any good. The nicotine is making me nervous and fumbly. No more smoking. Between the nicotine and my nerves, my heart feels like it’s skipping in my chest. Time for some deep breathing exercises to calm down.”

  He did just that. After a few minutes, he began to relax. He had to keep mellow here and channel Van Helsing. He had to be cool like P
eter Cushing. In charge and ready to fight.

  “Okay, 4:43 now. Still nothing. The sun is down but it’s not really dark out yet, just kind of dim. I just looked out the window. The snow looks gray. A few lights have come on. One of them is over at the Skorenska’s. I’ve been meaning to go check on Maddie and the triplets. It should have been my priority. That just shows you where my head is at. There’s a phone here and the landlines, local calls anyway, seem to be working. I could call Maddie right now, but I can’t afford to distract myself. Something is going to happen and I know it.”

  He sipped some more water and waited. He put the .45 on his lap and waited for dark. It was going to be a goddamned long night. He was getting so nervous it felt like he was plugged into a wall socket.

  “4:59 pm. Getting dark outside now. I just opened the closet door to make sure nobody was hiding in there. I even looked under the bed. That’s how it is for me right now. I feel like I’m on the verge of a nervous fucking breakdown. The only thing that helps is channeling hate. Hatred of losing you and Megan, hatred of what those things are doing to this damn town. I have to keep hating. It keeps me sharp. Christ, the shadows are everywhere even with the nightstand lamp on. I’ve removed the shade for better light. It feels like something is crawling up my spine.”

  He waited, breathing in and out. All around town, the vampires were waking up, he figured. Sonja and Megan. Anne Stericki. They were all opening their eyes and giving praise to the night. By morning, the already teetering population of Wakefield would be thinned even more. He swallowed down some water. Something was about to happen and he could feel it from the nape of his neck to his lower spine. The room was like a lagoon of unbroken shadows barely disturbed by the light itself.

  “5:13 pm. Almost full dark now. I can feel something happening. My throat is dry as dust. My hands are shaking. Something is building in the air like a static charge. The shadows seem like they’re alive. I swear that I can see them moving, playing along the walls, and slithering out of the closet. They seemed to be concentrated on the bed and what’s laying on it. It looks like Cliff is being eaten by them. Oh Jesus…Cliff’s lips just opened.”

  Luke was sitting forward in his chair now. He was frozen in position. The parting of Cliff’s lips was impossibly loud. The air was filled with some cold, crawling energy. Its epicenter was the bed. It seemed to be radiating outwards from it in cold pulsations.

  “5:17. Full dark or near to it. Cliff’s hand just moved. The light is throwing a sort of exaggerated shadow of him against the wall. He’s not moving but, Christ, the shadow is. It seems to be sliding. I’m taking up the stake now. The gun is in my pocket. The hammer is in my right hand. Shit…he’s starting to tremble.”

  Luke went over to the bed and it took every ounce of strength that he had.

  Cliff was indeed beginning to tremble. The movements were minute as if some kind of crazy electrical activity were going on just below the skin. His face was the color of cool autumn moonlight. The wound in his neck looked like a black crater. His lips were gray and split open with tiny cracks. They closed, then opened again. The inside of his mouth was impossibly pink. Luke could see how long his canine teeth had grown. Not just long, but hooked like those of a Fer-de-lance and just as deadly. There was a twitch in the corner of his lips. His brow seemed to draw downward, sinking his eyes in shadows. A grimace passed over his face.

  His eyes opened.

  They were blank white, the pupils like tiny dots.

  He looked up at Luke and made a hissing sound, his black tongue playing over the spikes of his teeth.

  He said one word and the sound of it was like a blade scraped over sandpaper: “Luke.”

  Luke could not even remember deciding to bring the stake down. It seemed that by the time he was aware of it, the stake was already in motion. He brought it down left-handed with everything he had and it must have been considerable because it pierced Cliff just left of the sternum and went in at least three inches.

  Cliff let out a wild, screeching sound that filled the room and echoed around. His pale hands flopped and jumped and then clawed out at Luke. But by then, Luke brought the four-pound sledge down and nailed the stake square. The impact drove it all the way through and into the mattress beneath. What happened then was something Luke had never seen in any movie: Cliff split right open. From his sternum to his belly he opened right up and what was in there was some yellow, fibrous tissue that was like no human flesh he had ever seen before. It almost looked like fiberglass insulation or the guts of a freshly-carved pumpkin: yellow and seedy and stringy.

  Luke fell back and promptly threw up.

  Cliff kept screeching and it got louder and louder, seemingly beyond the volume human lungs could produce. Then he seemed to sink down into the mattress and his scream did not die out but fled from the room. Luke could hear it echoing down the hallway and down the stairwell like some escaping creature.

  Then it was gone.

  And as horrible as that was, it was nothing in comparison to what came from outside. It sounded like hundreds of screaming, wailing voices that rose up in a choir in the night. The undead felt his death and screamed their anguish all over town.

  Then it was over.

  The next thing Luke knew, he had the hatchet in his hand. Three quick chops and Cliff’s head was severed from his body. The staking and decapitation were remarkably bloodless. Of course they were: there was no blood left in him. The only fluid was a serous discharge that spurted out after the first hatchet chop. It sprayed out and spattered against the wall like snot. Cliff was just a corpse again that seemed to be sinking into itself. The fingers of his right hand had actually pierced the mattress and dug four deep trenches into it.

  Half out of his mind, Luke gathered up his things and ran down the stairs.

  He had the .45 in one hand and a stake in the other, the duffel thrown over his shoulder. He could not spend the night in that house. No way. Then he opened the front door and realized he had no choice.

  The walking dead were in the streets.

  49

  The next three days after staking Cliff Corbett were busy ones.

  He laid in three cords of wood for the stoves in the basement and the garage because he figured it was only a matter of time now before the power went out. He went over to the Corbetts and got all the dog food they had for Bob and helped himself to six cases of bottled water and a chainsaw he found there. He stockpiled plastic five-gallon cans of gasoline, shells for the .45 Smith and Marlin, more canned and dry food, fresh meat and vegetables, more batteries and flashlights, prybars and lanterns and lantern fuel. He went over to Shallberg’s and bought up insulated winter boots and several pairs of Carhartt insulated coveralls. If he was going to be working out in the cold, there was no sense in being uncomfortable.

  Then he set to work on the lathe in the garage making stakes. At first, his efforts were poor and clumsy, but after turning out twenty of them he got very good at it. He liked them in two-foot sections. They were easy to transport, but long enough to grab onto and ram through the chests of Carriers.

  In the next week, he destroyed sixteen of them.

  Bob sniffed them out and Luke dragged them out into the light or staked them. He didn’t have the heart to start in his own neighborhood. Doing what he had to do was easier if they were strangers.

  But sooner or later, he knew, he would have to go house to house on 13th Street. Sonja and Megan were out there somewhere and so was Anne Stericki.

  50

  He had promised himself he would go look in on Maddie Skorenska and the triplets, so he went over there about an hour after first light one morning. He had needles in his belly as he climbed the porch. Bob was tense, skittish. He knew there was something in that house. Maybe Luke suspected as much, but Bob knew it.

  The door was unlocked and they went in together. Luke had to practically drag Bob over the threshold. It was clear that he did not like it in the least.

  The first thing L
uke noticed was that the heat was off.

  It was chill in the house, but there was no masking the stale, pervasive odor that was like old cornhusks locked in a dusty barn or books flaking away for decades in a moldering trunk. It wasn’t a putrescent stink as he’d encountered before but one of death suspended and held in check: dry, crumbling.

  Bob started to growl.

  “Easy,” Luke told him. If he could smell it, he could just imagine what it must have been like for the dog with his hyper olfactory sense. It must have been vile beyond words, a living yellow seam of dissolution.

  Bob led him down the hallway and then sat down before a door, looking sheepish and scared as he did whenever he found a Carrier.

  Sighing, Luke went inside and found Maddie right away. She was under the bed. He put his flashlight beam in her pallid, grinning face, and knew he couldn’t go through with it. There was just no way. He wondered vaguely what had happened to her, who had gotten to her, but he knew. In his heart, he knew very well.

  Anne got to her. You have no proof of that, yet you know it’s true. Anne probably came after the triplets who then came after their mother.

  Again, no proof, but his belief was irrefutable. They were all monsters, but Anne was the very worst of them. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Lucy Westenra was a real horror that fed off children, but it was Dracula himself that was the apex monster. Luke hoped that Anne would be as close as he’d ever come to the fictional count.

  He put the light on Maddie again.

  She was nothing but a fucking mindless leech now, but in life she had been very sweet. He knew if he had to destroy her, that the image of it would haunt him for years.

  And therein lay the problem with cleaning out the neighborhood.

  They had all been his friends, some good friends and others just acquaintances, but he still had personal relationships with them all and that made it so much harder. When they cried out, it would be like he was hurting them. Maybe Van Helsing in the old vampire movies claimed that you were merely destroying a shell and setting a soul free when you staked them, but to see it, to really experience it, was to know that they died a second time in horrendous agony.