What were they going to do now? He wondered. Mavis was out of action and now he was saddled with this adolescent screamy-meemie. What was the best course of action? Leaning down to take her pulse again, Douglas locked eyes with the old woman.
“Mind getting offf me? You’re heavy.”
Douglas sprung up, surprised. Mavis wiped her forehead. Sitting up, She began nodding. George stopped snifffling, instead taking in his mother, looking to her for answers. Douglas helped Mavis up to her feet. She was unsteady for a moment, then pushed offf away from him.
“No use crying. Jimmy ain’t coming back.”
Mavis took a few steps, then tottered sideways. Douglas stepped in to steady her. The old woman held onto his arm for a moment. Patting the young man on the arm, she regained her composure, stood up and nodded to herself.
“Much obliged. Let me think for a moment.” Doug followed Mavis as she strode with a purpose through her desecrated house. Ignoring the gore, and garish modern art composed of her son, the old woman sought answers in every corner. Her mind was agitated. She kept swearing under her breath. She appeared unhinged. George started to step in and aid her. Douglas waved him offf. He had learned this was her way to cope.
Finally af er walking the same pattern of kitchen tiles four or fiive times, Douglas reached out to stop her. Mavis whirled at him, standing as if ready to attack.
Her cheeks were tear stained , but her eyes were red.
“This son of a bastard, shit-heap must die. I want it to do it slow. I want it to hurt. And I want to do it. No way this piece of shit gets away from me. You listening?”
The men said nothing.
“You got a problem with that?”
Again, no one dared respond.
“Fine then. Old world problems get their old world solutions.” Mavis strode away as much as her old body could allow. Both young men stared after her. Clattering of metal was heard. More glass breaking and plenty of expletives were uttered. Mavis returned, sheathing the deadly sword in her scabbard which had always doubled as her belt. Mavis, then disappeared into the deeper, more cluttered regions of her home. George walked after her snifffling as he went. Doug exhaled.
So truth to be told, the Gray could enter where he wanted without any problem. No one was safe from his ministrations or visits.
Doug remembered what Abernathy had told him the day before. The little man had poured a stifff drink of Smythe family Scotch, sipping it down before talking, savoring every drop.
“Remember all this land was his at one time. He purchased it from his attorney or had had it bequeathed to him from ‘willing’ owners. In Life, my relative was insidious. An excellent businessman. In either case, the Gray was deed holder of the region since far, far back. Very few of the laws or what we take to be rules today, apply to him. Most of Olde Irving Park belongs to him. Ownership has privileges.”
“An open door policy.” Mumbled Doug.
“Exactly.” Retorted Abernathy.
“Well, what rules do apply to him?” Doug had asked.
Abernathy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Apart from gravity, little else, I’m afraid.”
Doug grimaced. Hopeless depressing talk turned him offf. Abernathy continued. “Only way to stop someone like him would be a full frontal assault. His arrogance would get the better of him and perhaps, just perhaps, he wouldn’t be able to overcome you. And if you were so lucky, then cut offf the bloody bastard’s head with alacrity.”
Both men eyed each other, knowing the possibility of said moment happening was slim to none. Abernathy continued.
“That said, I do wish the sun would return. At least we would have an ally. His allies planned this feat
magnifiicently.”
“You admire the guy?” Doug inquired. “Does one admire the shark? No. I acknowledge his singular talent. Respect your adversary before trying to eliminate him.” Abernathy had fiinished another pour. He then walked offf to check on Charles. Doug and Cray had then gone to ready themselves for Erna.
Douglas had taken the Brit’s words as hyperbole. Another mistake of his. Too much, too fast. Doug shook away sour thoughts of defeat. Dwelling on the dark was useless. Pulling his cell phone free from his back pocket, Douglas logged in trying to locate a signal. He was in luck. Two bars and a full battery signal appeared. Nothing had been working for the past 72 hours. Chicago’s Con-Ed must have been working overtime to get the reception towers back up and running. Checking the local weather app, cloud coverage was to hold for a few more days. The wind might blow the skies clear later at night, but now with all daily precipitation, no warmth was projected to appear for many hours to come. Chicago was fiixed to freeze for at least 2 more days. Santa was going to be one cold cherub.
Giving the Gray ample opportunity to enter homes at will, feeding on whoever he desired. They had to get his damn attention before anymore people were killed. Gods of the North must be protecting the creature.
“Welcome to the Windy City.” Doug mumbled. “Stand in one place too long, we freeze dry you.”
He turned the power offf on his phone, returning it to his pocket. George wandered back into the room.
“What did the dark man look like? This Gray.” George’s soul had fled with his courage. Doug saw hesitancy in his eyes. The young man, his greasy blonde hair tangled wet with tears, was broken and scared shitless.
“The dude was bigger than Bernard”.
“Sorry. What?” George gulped for air. “There was this guy in the cages back in Joliet. Big black dude. A Crip or something. Liked to fiight and fuck. If you ever got in his sights or pissed him offf, he would rack you up. When he beat you down, and he usually did, he’d lean in real close and whisper bad nothings at you. Like what he would do to you later when he got you alone in the showers or whatever. You learned to stir clear of Bernard.”
Doug winced. Where the hell was this going? He picked up a box of metal objects.
“Bernard. Dark as midnight. A big black …” Doug cut offf the slur before he fiinished.
“Got it. What does that have to do with …?” George spit onto the floor. “You don’t get it. Bernard was unstoppable. When he wanted something, or someone, nothing would deter him. Just like this Gray guy.”
Doug rummaged through the box fiilled with sharp objects. Apparently Jimmy had loved to construct lethal ammunition for bow and slingshot. Doug’s fiingers gingerly gripped sharpened throwing stars. He pocketed slim knives, along with larger metal marbles to be used with a slingshot. Say what you wanted about these two weird brothers, they had talent for making lethal weapons.
“Find anything you like?”
George’s front lip mewled up into his cheek. His eyes never left his mother. Mavis stood in a Gray out fiit, the sword named Eviscerator hung in its battered leather scabbard, resting neatly in its ring. Another smaller worn leather lanyard hung from her chest. Light chain mail made up the uniform she wore, over what heavy clothing the Mormons had given her. White cloth protected her neck covering her head like a Habib. The old woman scanned the young men’s faces searching for sarcasm or hidden laughter. There was none. Only because both males were too shocked to comment.
Unliving hordes had taken too much from them for there to be any more mirth. The cigarette dangling from Mavis’ mouth shaded her wry visage.
“Mama, where you get that outfiit?” Squeaked George. “Had it for years. Wish I were younger to use the sword, but the Lord provides when he deems necessary. Glad I remember my prayers.”
George sat on the remaining corner of the sofa that was intact. He looked shocked.
“You pray?” Doug winced as Mavis rounded on her son. She took the cigarette out of her mouth knocking the ash into her shag carpet. She leaned in towards her son.
“That’s your biggest question? Mine is, why don’t you?”
George looked away. His unevenly chopped mullet hid his shame.
“Anyway. We’re all going after this sick putrid thing. I�
�m going to kill him. Gray is mine. Understood?” “So you said.” Riposted Douglas. “But he’s not going to go down easy. He probably already has help. Made more of those things. Cray is out there as well.”
She pointed her cigarette at Doug.
“That’s why we work the Race Mansion together. That work for you?”
Mavis clapped her gloved hands. She hugged her son briefly. “Son, I know you’re frightened. You stay here. If you fiind your balls, you’ll fiind us by the fiire house on Irving Park Road or at the old mansion next to the greasy spoon next door. You should be out there with me revenging your brother! But you were always the weak link in our house. I don’t respect it, but I love you. Survive. Live your life. If we don’t come back, you know where the valuables are. Get out. Go west to Las Vegas where your cousins are. This place is dead. But if what I fear happens, there won’t be anywhere left to run. Up to us to stop this thing. K?”
Mavis slapped her hips looking every bit the nonthreatening warrior. Doug stared at her. He coughed, suppressing a laugh. Mavis was dressed in a canvas body suit, akin to those old time swimsuits flappers wore back in the 1920s.It covered her entire body. All she needed was stripes. A red and black beaded rosary hung from around her neck. Along with aforementioned swords and assorted cutlery.
A cigarette dangled from her lips. She grinned back. “Yeah. A few Mormon friends gave me an extra pair of their ‘celebrate’ underwear. Thought it might be a good idea to alter it as light weight body armor. Now I can ‘celebrate’ the Gray’s demise.”
“Mormons?” Asked Doug. “I think you mean ‘celibate’ underwear.” “Yep. Believe it or not, John Smith and his crew had quite a run in with the blood suckers on their journey across the plains. Why do you think they take on so many wives for one man? Gotta build an army when you need it.”
“Mormons and the blood-suckers?” Doug repeated.
Mavis tossed a wood stake at him. It spun thru the air. “Beginning to sound like my sons. Here. Use this when you get close. You fiinish Gray, if I can’t. Out of all of us, you’re the strongest and most focused.”
Doug nodded. Every nerve in his body throbbed. His lef t eye was still red. Breathing took a sustained efffort. He couldn’t let these people down. But he felt like a black cat’s ass. The hope of stopping these blood-suckers without more help was crap. Gray alone was nearly unstoppable.
Still. If not him, who would it be? A lot of Chicagoans will die. Joan. Doug started to think about calling her when Mavis stopped him.
“What are you going to do? What you thinking?”
Mavis fastened straps around her legs. It looked like she was wearing a canvas parachute strapped around her torso. Doug smiled. All this was morbidly absurd. If he wasn’t living it, moment by moment, he never would have believed it. Doug answered her.
“Joan. I want to give her a call. Maybe I can reach her. When are we leaving?” “Af ter I got lock my kootch down? Don’t look so shocked. This is our only play, kid. If this don’t work, we have nothing left. And if Irving Park goes, then one by one, the rest of Chicago. We gotta be up to the task. And we gotta go. Call her quick.”
He did so. The phone on her end rang and rang. He frowned. Guess not everyone had power back yet.
Doug zipped up his leather jacket. He spoke a thought. “Gray can’t be all that powerful. We can call the national guard. The police. If we wait long enough for the storm to break, I can get some of my own friends to come. They’d have enough fiirepower to blow his ass away.”
Mavis exhaled. “All too late. You saw how fast the bites carry the infection. How many more people will die if we wait too long? I don’t know what the Gray wants, but I’m sure it’s not anything that will benefiit us. We have to end him.”
Mavis walked over to Doug, punching him in the chest. “It’s Christmas Day. All these sheeple will be staying in their houses. Children will be home. If Gray wants to feed, he can smash into any home he wants and kill them all. Wind being as strong as it is, no one will hear. It would be a slaughter.”
Doug checked his own clothing. He had all the weapons he could possibly carry. He felt ready.
“I’m just worried. What if we’re not enough?” She took the cigarette from her mouth and held it in front of her. Then her other hand came down and smashed it into the wall smearing down the wallpaper with her hand. Tobacco ash and embers extinguished themselves leaving a brown smear.
“Then that, kid. Then that’s us.” Mavis walked slowly out of the room.
“Nut up war hero. Ain’t got time for no Molly-coddling. You know what happens.”
George barely nodded. He was trying hard nod to cry. And failing at that task.
“I’m not no pussy.” The man-child whispered. Mavis turned to her son laying a hand on his shoulder. She already had another cigarette lit.
“You’re my son.” She patted his arm. “And I love you.” George rubbed his eyes, turning away from them. Mavis thumped her safety helmet.
“Right. Let’s go, war-hero. Time to embrace the suck.” Doug picked up the bag with the remaining weapons. They seemed stocked with lethal fiirepower. Doug knew they had three such bags, but he knew it probably wouldn’t be enough. The blood thirsty freaks were awfully difffiicult to slay.
Mavis walked out the back door af ter checking their surroundings. She uncovered the hidden snow mobiles buried under the mattresses from before. She threw the covers into the yard where they were swept away by the gusts. Doug adjusted the bags, tying down the weapons. The restraining straps were locked to the machines. Mavis threw her cigarette away. The butt sparked in the wind, its embers scattering amid the white pellets, vanishing like hope in the dark.
Mavis roared offf ahead of him, her sword clanging lightly against the seat.
Doug followed her. His thought of her extinguished cofffiin stick. Mavis and he were the same. He didn’t think either of them would be coming back. Neither one took a last look back as the storm devoured them whole.
Chapter 32
Dee stood in the snow. The waitress stared at her prey. John saw no plumes of oxygen leave her mouth. Proof, Dee was not breathing. She no longer needed to. There she stood, a huge gaping wound on her neck staining her entire uniform. The burgundy hue looked as if an entire blood-red lipstick case had melted down her breasts.
“You”re barefoot.” John whispered, his personal takeaway from such an odd sight. Dee grinned slowly exposing a row of sharpened incisors that would make a great white shark proud. Her eyes were black. She held out her arms as if beckoning a lover.
Around him, a number of newly dead restaurant patrons began to stir under the black tarp John had covered them with. There were not as many as Dee wanted. The young paramedic felt his knees buckle as the dead began to resuscitate. This couldn’t be real.
“Let me kiss you.” Dee enticed, standing in the ice storm. I’ll die here, thought John. Unless I do something. The paramedic picked up a broken wooden chair that had been crushed by Erna earlier in the night. John pulled loose its legs. Then he remembered advice from earlier. He realized what the soldier had told him was true.
“Any of these people begin getting up. Use what’s in here to put them down.”
The Pixie-stick had told him. “Hit them here. In the chest. Just do it.” The bag had been thrown to the concrete then. John had nodded at the words and promptly forgotten about it. Now, he looked at the black bag.
Ignoring Dee, John forced himself to unzip it, exposing two mallets and ten sharp stakes inside. Sounds of snakes rising fiilled the air in the exposed fiirehouse. John wiped tears from his eyes. He knew he had to do this. A mental check reassured him that there were fourteen males and three females slain in the restaurant, now lying under tarps. Not all had been bitten, so he hoped the math worked out. Ten stakes for ten damned blood-suckers.
John was no rube. He had traveled the world seeing all kinds of horrible crap. He’d been a medic in South America with the Red Cross. In Mali and Niger, John had
heard a lot of rumors, thought to be bloody superstitions, how vampires were being brought to life. Even a rumor of being a vampire in Africa could get you staked there.
As it were, if you could call a corpse walking af ter all body functions ceased a ‘vampire’. How a bite from another human with no blood or plasma in their bodies could still be ambulatory. John was desperate for a scientifiic answer. There were none. If you were within biting range of these undead, you would be the next item on their menu.
Seeing was believing.
Like now. Three of the restaurant corpses were trying to rise. Dee had kept her eyes locked on John. Her teeth barred, there was a steady hiss frothing from between her jaws. She hadn’t tried to enter yet. Or attack him.
Get it done, He decided. John took the nicest stake carved of cherry, driving it hard into a skinny white teen’s chest. It went in neat. Its point protruded through the male’s back. Black smoke curled from the wound.
Next, a biker chick, dirty brunette hair pulled back into corn rows, grasped John’s wrist. He gasped. She was strong, snapping his ulna quickly with inhuman strength. The bag containing the remaining stakes fell from his grip.
John gritted his teeth and slammed the metal mallet down into the biker’s skull as she raised full up towards him. The thing’s cranium cracked, splitting apart like an egg. It shuddered, releasing her grip. John withdrew the tool and pounded it into her head collapsing bone and splattering brain matter. She fell back without a sound, her body newly dead decided to fiinally release itself into the black beyond. John followed through plunging a stake into her with his good arm.
Dee growled now, in full sight, standing center of the open fiire house doors. The wind was picking up, swirling offf the top snow, appearing like angry snakes taking over the city.
John tried to wrap his broken wrist. It was bad, a compound fracture. The female had snapped it cleanly. John gasped using an unwrapped bandage from the floor to stabilize his wound. His moan was matched by the remaining thing under the black tarp rising from its wounds.
Grayland: Chapter Three of the Dark Chicago Series Page 14