Bullets Will Work: A Vampire Slayer Novel

by Geoffrey C Porter

  The phone clicked off.

  I looked on the phone for a speed dial. I didn't see any buttons even close. There was one curious button that I'd never pressed before: "ENCRYPT."

  So I pressed it. It listed four numbers: 1,2,3,4, followed by the word encrypted. I pressed #1, and the phone started ringing. I waited, and a female voice answered, "Hello?"

  I said, "Agent nine, please."

  She said, "Connecting…"

  I waited and a moment later the voice I remembered said, "Happy?"

  I asked, "What are the other three numbers?"

  "I wouldn't know. You'll have to ask Father Paul that. You'll likely be meeting with him in a little while if you don't secure your team."

  "Lambert and Simon aren't rats."

  "Throw them out of the warehouse. Recruit a new team from the Catholics."

  The windows were dark, and I knew the sun had already set. "It's past dark. I can't simply throw them to the wolves."

  "Secure them. Tie them up!"

  "No. They aren't animals."

  "Put a bullet in their brains!"

  "They're getting drunk. Is that all you called for? To tell me to kill my friends?"

  "They aren't your friends. One of them ratted your team out."

  "I don't know you. I don't trust you. I trust Lambert and Simon."

  "Look, our dads served in the war together. I've been working on the vampire menace for three years. Teams that get hit today like yours did have always been ratted out!"

  I hung up the phone. Pondered my situation. I was the only one with the codes to the doors. The escape tunnel was secured with a thick master lock, and only I had the key. The warehouse was safe: as safe as anywhere.

  Chapter 21

  I emailed my dad with the bad news about Manuel and Ben. Did my nightly stretches to calm my mind. I couldn't imagine that Lambert or Simon had ratted the team out. I stripped down to my boxers, so I could get some sleep.

  I walked over to my door to close it when all the lights went out, and the computer shut off. I peered into the hallway, and it was pitch black. We had emergency lights in the hallway that should have kicked on. My Colt sat on the dresser next to my hammock, and I chambered a round ever so quietly.

  Lambert shouted, "Power is out, Sidney. Let's get it fixed."

  I could have cried.

  "I'm in my hammock," I shouted back. "It's probably just a blown fuse. You can fix it."

  "Come on, Sidney, you're the electrician."

  "I'm very comfortable. You know where the breaker box is."

  "Come on out, Sidney," he said. "I think I know where the flashlight is, but I don't know a damn thing about breaker boxes."

  "It's real simple. There are switches for each circuit in the building, and some will be off, or the main will be off. Just flip it on."

  "Come on out, Sid, and give me a hand," he said.

  I knew by the way he said, "Sid." That he was a rat. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was at the end of the hall in the corner. Decided I could dodge into the hallway and maybe get a lucky shot off. Stepped briskly into the hall aiming for the corner where I thought he was. I was intercepted though by a baseball bat to my stomach and another one to my Colt. The pistol fired into the ceiling, and I doubled over. The bats kept hitting me, and I fell to the ground losing the Colt.

  Lambert shouted, "Don't kill him!"

  The bats made clanking noises as they were tossed to the side, and two hands grabbed each of my arms. I was in a bit of pain: my head spun and my ribs ached from the blows. The lights clicked on. I looked around: three vampires on each side of me, and Lambert standing in the hallway smiling.

  I shouted, "Why?"

  "It was all Samantha's idea, Sid. I told you she wrote screenplays. You know how hard it is to sell a screenplay? And you don't make any real money writing screenplays. You have to be the producer of a movie to make the real money. When her friends first approached me, they offered five million.

  "Samantha and I said that wasn't enough. They countered with ten million. I said four magic words, 'We have Sidney Daniels.' They were like, 'The one and only?' I said, 'Square brow and wide jaw?' They conferred for a moment and offered us fifty million for you, Sid. Plus an extra three million for any other slayers they had to kill."

  "They aren't going to pay you, you idiot. They're going to kill you."

  Three gunshots echoed from downstairs. Lambert said, "That would be Simon getting his retirement.

  "They'll pay." He smiled. "Why wouldn't they? They have the keys to the federal reserve. They can pretty much print money. Plus, they're friends of Samantha which makes them friends of mine. Samantha was sick of me going out slaying. She feared that I'd end up dead or worse."

  "Why the whole team, Lambert? Why not just give them me?"

  "You were supposed to plant those charges today. And Ben, Ben put my life at risk with every powdered donut he ate. He got what was coming to him."

  "How did you get the vampires in the warehouse?" I asked.

  "The lock was a thick, hardened master lock. But the door itself to the escape tunnel was hammered iron from the previous century. The torch cut it like butter."

  My thoughts rolled around in my head in disbelief. I said, "You're doing this because you want to make movies?"

  "No. I want to own my own tropical island. I have one picked out that is up for sale. Samantha wants to make movies. She's going to write scripts on the solitude of our island. Then she's going to invest in a production company and start making the films. She said I could become an actor if I wanted to. I haven't decided yet."

  "You'd make a great actor, Lambert, except you haven't killed everyone who knows your face."

  "Only Father Titus has seen my face in the last seven years. And from what I understand, Father Titus won't be around very much longer. In fact, I'd be surprised if he makes it through the night."

  "You're a fucking rat."

  "I always hated your cooking," he said. "I was perfectly happy before you came here, and then I end up washing dishes."

  "You ratted out the team because of my cooking?"

  "You put cinnamon in the pancake batter! You undercooked spaghetti, but you burn everything else. The fact that I'm putting an end to your grotesque fabrications in the kitchen is just a side benefit. It's like cash back awards on your credit card."

  Lambert paused. He said, "You haven't gotten to the crux of the matter, Sid. What are we going to do with you?"

  I closed my eyes. I didn't want to know.

  "If you're bitten by a vampire, you turn into a vampire," he said. "Two bites from vampires and you turn into a master, or you turn into an animal. Three bites from vampires and you turn into an animal. You won't even remember your own name, so all you'll know is a hunger for blood and flesh."

  I hissed. "If I have to hunt you down from beyond the grave I will, Lambert."

  "I'm so afraid. The vampires would spend years torturing you, but they figured with your psyche they'd get tired of it before you did. Bite him."

  Three sets of teeth sunk into my arms. The toxin started to work its way through my veins. Lambert said, "You'll notice a slight paralysis before you lose consciousness. Maybe you could crawl to your Colt and blow your brains out. But I highly doubt it. After three bites, you simply cannot move your limbs."

  I heard a stereo kick on to Iron Butterfly's In-a-gadda-da-vida. Lambert said, "By the time this song is over you will be lost forever. Come on, boys, let's get out of here."

  The music played. The vampires left. I used to enjoy Iron Butterfly. I found I couldn't move as my head seemed to lift up off the ground and float above me.

  Silence followed the drums, and I lay there.

  A voice echoed in my mind, a voice from my youth. It was my foreman from Limbird Construction. But he was yelling, and he never yelled. "Get up, Sidney. Move your lazy ass. MOVE!"

  I tried. Nothing happened.

  "You piece of shit, move your ass!"<
br />
  He never cursed.

  I moved my right arm getting it under myself and pushed. A faint crying danced in my ears like it was carried by the wind. This time it was Emily's voice that spoke. "You've got to move, Sid. Crawl, it doesn't matter. Just move. I'll help you. I'll be with you again. But first, you have to move."

  A smile etched on my face, and I started to crawl. Manuel's room was just across the hallway. I fell down, my muscles couldn't take it. Emily whispered in my ear, "Try, my love. We'll always be together. But you must move…"

  I pushed myself up with my arms and inched forward. Moved slowly but methodologically across the hallway floor. I reached the lock box with the anti-venom and prayed a slight thank you. Filled the syringe and plunged it into my right leg. I pushed down the plunger, and it burned.

  I filled the syringe a second time and plunged it into my left leg. The pain made my hand twitch, and the needle broke off in my leg. That will hurt tomorrow. I fell back onto my back and lay there as the chemicals took over my body.

  I drifted off into a labored sleep. I was back on the beach on my honeymoon with Emily. The sun set in a brilliant array of purple, orange, blue, and red. Emily turned to me. "I said we'd be together again. I'm with you, always."

  I leaned over and kissed her. I had been practicing at controlling my dreams and leaning them towards sexual encounters instead of women turning into vampires at dusk. We kissed on the beach for the longest time. Then I found myself with her in a hammock, and she rode me like a cowgirl. Frankly, I thought I was too old for wet dreams, but this dream qualified. She lay naked next to me in the hammock.

  "You know you could remarry," she said. "We'll be together forever, but you could remarry. You could have kids. You would have beautiful children."

  I sighed. "I want to be with you alone…"

  She smiled at me. "We will, in time. You have a long life ahead of you. I'll wait for you."

  "Kiss me."

  She embraced me. The dream seemed to last forever with her kissing me on the lips and the neck. She would stop and run her hand through my hair. I would stop and fondle her breasts as if I had never touched them before.

  I woke up to a guttural growl coming from my stomach and a splitting headache.

  Chapter 22

  I realized I needed to pee terribly. Still couldn't move. The phone in Manuel's room started to ring. I started out simply by blinking my eyes over and over. Then I tried clenching my right hand, and, with a twitch, my fingers moved. The machine picked up the phone call.

  "This is Father Titus. We're going to breach your perimeter at noon if we don't hear from you before then."

  Needed to pee. I still had a broken needle in my leg. Tried to sit up, and that worked. Pushed on the floor with my hands and legs and stood up. I stumbled towards the bathroom and peed for a solid half hour. No, I didn't pee for that long, but it was the longest I think I've peed in my life. The pee was bright orange.

  I went downstairs and found a needle-nose pliers. Pulled the piece of steel from my leg.

  Then my stomach growled again, and my legs felt sturdy enough. I headed for the kitchen. The first thing I saw was the fruit dish on the counter, and I grabbed an apple. It didn't even put a scratch in my hunger, and I ate two more apples and two bananas. My stomach still growled, and I went to the bread drawer and found one lone cinnamon raisin bagel. I toasted it and buttered it. I poured the last of the milk in a glass and downed it with the bagel.

  My entire body hurt. I considered laying on the ground and just whimpering for a while. I decided on a long, hot shower instead. I stood there with the water pounding my face. When the water ran cold, I shut it off. I toweled myself off and examined the bite wounds on my arms. They were scabbed over nicely. I put on fresh clothes and started working out in my mind what I needed to do.

  I called Father Titus on the phone. He answered, "Hello?"

  "Simon's dead. Lambert ratted us out."

  "How did you survive?"

  "Lambert's friends bit me three times. Manuel had a vial of anti-venom, and I took it."

  "There's no anti-venom," he said.

  "In Manuel's things, I found a vial marked anti-venom. I injected it into my leg."

  "I've never heard of such a thing. Have you checked your blood sugar?"

  I paused. It never occurred to me that I might be a vampire now. Would I start craving blood soon?

  "No, Father, I haven't checked my blood sugar," I said.

  "Check it right now."

  I went to the front door which is where we kept the meter. I ran the test. It came back 76 which is low for a human but not vampiric.

  I said, "76," into the phone.

  Father Titus breathed a sigh of relief.

  "We need to do something about Simon," I said.

  "Of course. I'll be there soon, and I'll have an ambulance meet me."

  The phone clicked off.

  I waited. The exterior alarm sounded, and I opened the gate for them. I let Father Titus and the paramedics in, and Father Titus said a few prayers over Simon. Then the paramedics bagged him and hauled him off.

  Father Titus approached me. He looked me in the eye. "What are you going to do?"

  I sighed, for I didn't know for sure. "I'm not very good at running, Father. They think I'm dead. I can stay here and play dead. I don't know for certain what I'll do."

  "If you need anything, my son, phone me."

  "Will do."

  As he turned to leave I remembered Lambert's words. "Lambert said you wouldn't make it through the night last night…"

  Father Titus turned on me and smiled. "Yes, a small party of armed vampires did try and assault my rectory, but we were expecting them, and a few of my parishioners are ex-marines. They held a candlelight vigil through the night and showed the vampires the one true path to God."

  "Excellent. You could have warned me."

  "You did get a phone call didn't you?"

  I paused. Then I said, "Yeah, but not from somebody I trusted."

  "Then you have learned a valuable lesson about whom you can trust."

  "A very costly lesson."

  "It's said that God has a special space in heaven for his holy warriors. Simon is in a better place."

  "Better place or not, I'm going to miss him."

  "Slayers rarely retire. Simon knew what he was getting into when he joined the church."

  I nodded. Father Titus turned and left. I secured the door and the gate after him.

  For the second time in my life, I went and got a bucket and a sponge and cleaned up a pool of blood.

  It clicked in my mind, no matter how well I secured the perimeter of the warehouse the escape tunnel was wide open. I went upstairs to the armory and punched in the key code to the door. Went inside and grabbed an unopened case of forty shape charges. I grabbed a detonator and hauled everything downstairs to the tunnel.

  I strapped a light on my head and grabbed four of the charges and headed down the tunnel. At about the halfway point, I planted two charges on the ceiling and one charge on each side of the wall. Dirty, muddy water kept dripping on me. I went back for more charges. I repeated the process until the passageway was lined with all forty charges.

  I paused, wondering if I might be over doing it. I shrugged and said, "What the heck?" out-loud.

  I duct-taped the iron door closed over the tunnel. I said to myself, do it. Then I said, wait, get the hell out of the way. So I left the little room that hid the passage and closed the door. I took a few steps away from the door and hunkered down. I whispered, "Fire in the hole!"

  I clicked the detonator and BOOM!

  The iron door from the tunnel slammed into the door hiding the entrance, and the door bounced from the impact. I smiled.

  I opened it up and looked inside. Smoke and dust clogged the air. I waited for it to clear. Where there was a tunnel now, only a pile of dirt and broken concrete remained.

  It dawned on me it was going on dinner time, and I starte
d scrounging for food. I found one of Manuel's steaks in the deep freeze and grilled it. It dawned on me that I couldn't go for groceries. If I left the lair alone and anyone saw, they'd realize the warehouse only had one guard, and the vampires would surely storm it.

  I needed to make it look like there was more than one slayer in the warehouse. It dawned on me a simple ruse might work. I could have Father Titus bring his car in and park it in the warehouse a few times as if he were dropping off slayers.

  My body still ached, and I lay in my hammock when I began to realize I wanted revenge. I wanted to hunt down Lambert and kill him. How, though, I thought.

  I went and found my satellite phone and dialed speed dial one. A woman answered, and I said, "Agent nine, please."

  The woman said, "Right away."

  The voice I recognized answered, "Hello, Sidney."

  "I want Lambert dead."

  "Of course. How do you propose we find him?"

  "He said he was going to buy an island."

  "Really?"

  "Yes."

  "What does he look like?"

  "He looks like a fucking rat."

  "Hair? Eyes? Facial features?"

  "Stringy, thin brown hair. Brown eyes. Triangular face."

  There was a pause, and then clicking sounded as if on a keyboard.

  "We'll do what we can," he said.

  "I have another need. I can't go to the grocery store," I said. "I'm going to mail order some food off the internet. I need the shipments from the air base expedited so nothing spoils."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  "Make it so! I'm going to starve."

  "I'll call the airbase tonight. Order your food."

  I clicked the phone off and went to my computer. I typed "prime beef" into the search engine. Found a site that carried a variety of thick cut steaks, and I ordered an assortment. The bill was for over five hundred dollars, but I needed food. I found a site that carried bread machines and ordered a bread machine and plenty of supplies. Stumbling upon a site that had citrus fruit gift boxes, I ordered a few of those. A weird craving for gummi bears assaulted me, and I found a site that would ship me a ten-pound box, so I clicked away ordering them.