Jack Farris went in for a punch. Even as a vampire he still fought with his fists. Jeremy barely ducked the brute, sidestepping him, and letting Farris’ own weight and momentum carry him soaring past, causing him to fall face first into the pavement.
“Farris, you retard!” Max said. He flew above Johnny, wrapping his legs and feet around Johnny’s neck. He could actually apply enough pressure to choke the life from him, and with the ability to fly, he could hover over him, without having to worry about losing his balance, something Farris still failed to do.
Johnny couldn’t get at him with either cross or stake. He felt the air quickly rushing out of him, and he couldn’t catch another breath, his face turning red.
Tony wasn’t faring much better. Eddie was close to crushing his spine, and no matter how hard he pounded his fists across Eddie’s back, his vise grip didn’t loosen.
That’s when Eve moved in.
4
It was Tyler’s idea to call Myron this time. Although Donna didn’t need any excuses to call her husband, hearing the worry in her six year olds voice urged her on. She’d called before, hoping he’d pick up, hear his voice, but each time it rang and she got the same message: This number is unavailable. Leave a message at the tone, or press star to leave a call back number.
She didn’t want to press star!! She didn’t want to leave a damn message! She wanted to talk to her husband! What was he doing in Massachusetts that was so important? More importantly, what was he hiding? Up until now, she believed she really knew Myron, all his ins and outs, his little quirks, all his secrets, but now she wasn’t sure exactly what she knew, and that uncertainty frightened her.
Well, Donna was tired of waiting, tired of being afraid. She wanted to know what was going on. This was Myron, her husband, the man she loved, and she had a right to know.
Her two boys and her girl stared at her as she angrily hung up the phone. “C’mon kids!”
“Where?” Karen, her oldest, asked.
“We’re going to the airport. We’re going to go see your father.”
5
Eve went to Johnny’s aid first, as he was closest to her, and the most immediate. Max was choking the life out of him from above, with his feet no less. She flew at him from behind, using both hands to shove Max. Despite his hovering over Johnny, Max’s balance was precarious at best, and it didn’t take much to cause him to tip over.
Max fell, face forward into the concrete. Johnny dropped to his knees making a “Hoo-ahh, hoo-ahh!” sound as he gasped for air.
Eve didn’t have time to check on him. She moved quickly to
Tony, whose spine was going to be kindling any second under Eddie’s
constrictor grip. He was low to the ground, so it was easy for her to grab Eddie’s head and twist. She did it fast and hard, the snap immediate. Tony fell on his ass, holding his sides, face red. Eve knew she might not have done enough to kill Eddie, so she grabbed Tony’s stake off the ground, and jammed it into the kill spot, as he lay on the sidewalk with his head skewed at an awkward angle.
“You’ve been iced Eddie,” she said.
Tony held his palm up at Eve. He didn’t seem to be capable of speaking at the moment, but Eve was sure he was trying to thank her.
“No problem big guy.”
Farris was getting up, and so was Phil. Jake was still recovering from cross burn. Max got up and turned to look at Eve. He was no longer focused on Johnny; who was an easy target at the moment; and that was good. All his hatred was directed at her now. Eve saw his intent, and flew to meet him in mid-flight.
6
While Max and Eve grappled in the sky above as the group watched, trading blows (for every hit Max struck, Eve dealt him a harder blow), Dan Summers kept trying to get through to his wife Staci on the phone.
In his hospital room Blake waited to die. There was no other way to look at it. It was only a matter of time. He was no longer a John Doe or a Mark Trimble to police and hospital staff. He was Fulton Blake; to some a crazy old fool, to others a legend, but it didn’t matter who he was anymore. He’d never see a court or a jail cell. His days here were numbered. Blake could only hope that Eve and the rest of them could finish what he’d failed to. This town needed them, now more than ever.
The nurse walked in. “How are you doing Mr. Blake?”
Blake smiled. “Oh, I’m fine, never better.”
“Oh, we know that’s not true, but we’re working on it.” With
her carefully coifed dark hair, ruby red lips, and nurse’s whites and cap she looked like a pin up from the 50s.
“What’s your name?” Blake asked. She was pretty but he was too old.
“Samantha,” she said. He winced as if struck. His wife’s name.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Blake smiled. “No dear. That’s a lovely name.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Well, I stopped in to give you your heart medication.” She placed it on the nightstand with a cup of water. “Nurse Linda was feeling under the weather, so I’m making the rounds.”
“Well, I guess that makes me the lucky one,” Blake said.
“Aren’t you the charmer?” Samantha said.
Blake coughed. “I’ve had my better days.”
“Well, keep up the positivity,” she said, tipping him a little wink before she left.
“Will do.”
7
Max punched Eve in the face. She kicked him in the groin. They both hurt, but during their aerial acrobatics, they each took hits much harder than an average human could stand. A blow that might have knocked Eve unconscious caused only some pain, and a little blood. A kick that would have dropped Max to his knees whimpering still hurt like hell, but he could fight through it.
The audience below wasn’t an audience for long. Jake came at Myron again, grabbing the wrist of the hand with the cross that had burned him. Before he could twist and break Myron’s wrist, Myron brought the stake down on Jake’s wrist, piercing through it, causing blood to spurt as surely as any razor sliding across it. Jake let go of Myron, looking at his wrist as if it were a foreign object, turning it this way and that, as if the stake going all the way through it were some sort of elusive magic trick he couldn’t quite grasp, all the while
shrieking as his blood squirted out in jets.
Phil was running full steam at Staci; his gaping shoulder wound a ragged mass of blood and tissue that resembled the red lit cavern walls of the pit. She didn’t have time to move. Fortunately, she’d had time to recover her weapons from the ground before he’d got up again. She held up the cross and Phil skidded to a near halt, cartoonishly gliding on his heels, and flailing his arms wildly, trying to backtrack. It slowed him down enough for Staci’s stake. A little more than an arm’s length away, Staci lunged forward, bending at one knee and brought the stake down.
“Gaaaah!” Phil cried out as it pierced the skin, the wood tearing a hole through his aorta, shredding muscle. Already precariously balanced, he fell almost instantly, keeling over like a domino in a rough wind.
8
Blake got up to pee. Only since he’d been in the hospital had he started to use the cane. Eve had bought it for him. His gait had become less stable since the first heart attack, compounded by being bed-ridden. When he heard himself shuffle, he forced himself to pick his feet up as he walked. He propped the cane up against a wall. He might die here, but he’d be damned if he’d die an invalid. He’d used the bedpan once, in a moment of desperation. He was forced to witness the disgust on the orderly’s face (thankfully male) when he’d picked it up, despite his best efforts to disguise it. Blake never wanted to go through that humiliation again.
So he made his way, with effort, to the restroom, peed, and flushed. No number two tonight. He hadn’t eaten much the last few days. Blake had lost a lot of weight. He wasn’t quite skin and bones, but he was close.
As Blake walked back to his bed, he realized Samantha was in the room, standing there waiting
for him.
“Mr. Blake, you’re up! You really should be using your cane.”
“Please, call me Fulton. I’m fine.”
“You sure you don’t need some help back to…”
“I said I’m fine!” Blake said, more brusquely than he intended.
Samantha held her hands up in surrender. “Okay, got it.”
Blake squinched his face apologetically, partly with effort. But he made it to his bed. That was the important part.
“I’m turning in soon,” Samantha said. “The night shift nurse will be taking over. I came to check if there was anything else you needed before I left.”
Blake smiled. “No thank you dear.” He tried to hide the fact that he was still winded, and succeeded for the most part.
“All right,” Samantha said, “Good night then Mr. Blake… um, Fulton.”
“Good night.”
9
Farris didn’t fumble, or slip, or glide past Jeremy this time. He tackled him with the brute force of a ten man football team. Jeremy felt the air get knocked out of him, as his feet left the floor and his body travelled backward, a locomotive in reverse.
In a move that reminded Jeremy of high school, when he’d run into Tony after being chased, Tony, who’d gotten up at last, tried to stop the runaway train. Farris slammed Jeremy into him, and Tony didn’t manage to stop them, only slow them down. Tony ground his heels into the pavement. It was mostly concrete with some patches of dirt and grass in between, but he had to do something. They were headed straight for a brick wall. The jolt from smashing into Tony gave Jeremy an opportunity to seize the situation. He’d been blindsided by Farris’ tackle, but now realized he still had the advantage. He still had his weapons. And from the vantage point Jeremy had of Farris crouching around his midsection, as they hurtled backward toward a potentially painful end, Jeremy had one weak spot to exploit. With a sweep of his arm he drove the stake into the side of Farris’s neck. This
caused an instant reaction, mostly pain, and the backward thrust
became a crazy tangling of bodies as Farris stumbled over his own legs, causing Jeremy and Tony to fall back, gliding and scraping across the concrete as Farris fell atop them. They fell short about six feet from the brick wall.
The scrapes were bad, but nothing like Farris’s wound. He rolled off them, trying to clutch the stake jutting out of his neck, blood pouring in gouts. Jeremy thought he might have hit the jugular, even though he’d come in from the side. Jack Farris tried to curse them but all he managed were gurgles.
Despite their own pain, they both got up. Tony picked up his own stake and put Farris out of his misery.
10
The antiseptic halls, the fluorescent lights, the sterility and emptiness of the walls beyond his room made Blake uncomfortable. He was restless and couldn’t sleep. So he plodded along, slowly, cane in hand this time.
Something was wrong. The halls were too empty. He strolled past the receptionist desk and that too was empty. It was currently unmanned, the computers still on and blinking, screensavers flashing across the monitors.
Blake didn’t like this. He unscrewed the cap on his cane, exposing the point, and placed the cap in the pocket of his hospital gown. There was no reason to believe what he was thinking, but he couldn’t stop thinking it. And he was sadly in no condition to do battle. The last one nearly killed him.
“Hello?” Blake called. He didn’t know if that was a good move or not, but if what he thought was true, he was done for anyway.
No one responded. He moved further down the hall, past the receptionist’s desk. There was a creak from a doorway, what looked to be a janitor’s closet. It opened up ahead and to the left of him. A hospital orderly emerged in hospital whites, except he didn’t look
quite right. He was shambling out, zombie-like. Another door opened
up ahead to his right, from one of the patient’s rooms. It looked like a patient, in his gown, but he wasn’t a patient anymore. They turned toward Blake, sharp teeth flashing.
“Shit!” Blake said, and shuffled back from where he’d come, moving back toward the receptionist’s desk. If there were two on this floor, there might be more, and he needed a better weapon. Something he could use at a distance.
He circled behind the desk in search of anything that could be of use, and nearly tripped over one of the bodies lying there. What looked like three nurses and two doctors were heaped loosely in a pile behind the desk, a puddle of blood on the linoleum beneath them.
Fulton Blake felt his gut wrench looking down at them. “I’m so sorry, so sorry that I’ve brought this upon you.” But there was nothing he could do for them now. He had to fight the vampires and the ones they’d turned, and hope there were still survivors.
He found a good solid paperweight made of thick glass and palmed it. Good. He found a letter opener, not great, but if he could manage to throw it just right… He pocketed it.
How they’d managed to do so much damage, so quietly, without him hearing a peep, he wasn’t sure. Then it hit him.
Of course, they’d mesmerized them first, before killing them; made them believe they were something or someone else they could trust; or otherwise just hypnotized them. Smart bastards. The two vampires, newly formed, continued to move slowly toward him, as if driven by some biological imperative not even they were aware of. Soon they were joined by a third.
11
It was some time before Johnny got his breath back, but he did. He came to just in time to see Jake Mussen running at Myron, even though the Mussen brother had a stake through one of his wrists, and jets of blood were shooting out from both the entry and exit wounds. Myron was holding his cross up feebly to ward him off, but Johnny knew that neither his fear of the cross or of being burned by it was going to stop him. He’d just seen his older brother Phil killed, by a girl no less.
Johnny picked up his fallen stake and called to Myron. Myron turned and Johnny threw his stake toward him. Myron grabbed it out of the air, nearly fumbling it. Fortunately Jake was slower due to his wound, and Myron was able to drive the stake home just as Mussen reached him. With all the vampires dead but one, they all looked to the skies, to watch the kick out, drag out fight between Max and Eve.
12
The third vampire was a woman. She was a heavyset black lady dressed in a security guard uniform. She was coming off the elevator. She had a gun and a billy club at her sides, and Blake hoped she wouldn’t think to use them. She was the farthest away, but he would have to take her out first, if possible. He gripped the paperweight, prepared to throw it. He was still too far away. What Blake mistook for vampirism was shock. Her demeanor suddenly changed. She drew her gun and fired at the back of the orderly’s head. The bullet ripped through the back of his skull and exited out his forehead. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. She fired again at the vamp in the hospital gown, hitting him at the base of the neck. He too fell, his gown opening, revealing saggy, pasty buttocks without underwear, before he hit the linoleum face first.
Fulton Blake stood gape-jawed, surprised by the sudden turn of events.
“You okay mister?” the guard asked.
“Yes. Just thought you were one of them.”
“Yeah, I was pretending until I saw you.”
“They’re not zombies,” Blake said. “They can tell you’re human.”
She nodded, holstering her weapon. “Good to know.”
“Are there more of them?” Blake said.
“Yes,” she nodded, “All over the place.”
Blake walked out from behind the desk as she walked toward him.
“I’m Miriam,” she said.
“Glad to meet ya. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She waited. “And you are?”
“Ready to get out of here.”
13
Both bruised and bloody, Max kneed her in the stomach. Eve drew him in close and head butted him, all of this still airborne.
Max reeled back, dazed.
“I can do this all night,” Eve said.
“So can I princess,” Max grinned through bloody teeth.
“Oh, I’m gonna hit you extra hard for that one.”
Max had his dukes up, with no idea of Eve’s intentions. She did a quick twirl, one leg up, and side kicked him directly to the balls. Eve did this with sufficient force to send him flying from his invisible perch in the sky, down to one of the alleys below, between buildings, and into a row of trash cans that fell on top of him with a loud clang and clatter. Waste and refuse spilled out and over him.
“Goddamn it!” Max exclaimed, “Always with the nuts!” He brushed the garbage off his shoulders, some of it wet and staining. He picked himself up to exit the alley, and Eve along with the rest of the Get-Along-Gang were all waiting for him outside.
14
Miriam and Blake took the elevator down to the ground floor.
“Any survivors?” Blake asked.
“You’re the first I’ve seen,” she said. “And I’ve been to most
of the floors. Just started night duty and I walk into this shit! Guy tried to jump me and bite me on my way in! So they’re vamps, not zombies?”
“Yes,” Blake said.
“But they move so slowly,” she said.
“They’re new. A lot of them are just getting used to their situation, and I’m guessing a lot of them are patients too, who’ve become accustomed to being sick or injured. Trust me, they’ll come around.”
“Well, I don’t want to stick around for that.”
“There might still be survivors.”
“And we might be it,” Miriam said.
“Might,” Blake agreed. “Have you called for backup?”
She shook her head fervently. “No, they got my radio off of me, and I’ve tried the phones. They’re all dead.
The Pit in the Woods: A Mercy Falls Mythos Page 49