by Rich Hawkins
Gunshots rang out from behind a row of shops.
Dead bodies in moonlit gardens. Forms crouching by the bodies, heads lowered as if to kiss them. One of the forms raised its head for a moment to glance around, and Mason had to turn away from the terrible face of shockingly-white skin and red eyes.
Mason glimpsed people peering from windows, clearly terrified, waiting for help that would never come on this night. Men stood in doorways, looking out at the streets, clutching crowbars or cricket bats.
Pete’s car wasn’t the only vehicle on the roads. Other people were trying to flee the city. There were no more speed limits. They had already witnessed two collisions.
Two men had been fighting near a crashed car, swinging wild punches and kicks. The fight had ended when several vampires emerged onto the street and dragged the men off into the night.
Looters smashed the window front of a newsagent’s and spilled inside to ransack the insides of snack foods, cigarettes and alcohol.
Revealed in car headlights, people stumbled around the streets, some of them in shock and capable of nothing more than listless expressions. Easy prey for the vampires. Others just sat on the kerbs and cried with their heads in their hands. Some people ran from unseen horrors. Families in cars laden with belongings, trying to evacuate in the blackout. People swept torches about them and watched for the creatures out in the night.
A man on a bicycle pedalled as fast as he could, his face stricken with panic and fear, before something with a yawning mouth and powerful hands pulled him screaming into the shadows.
Chaos and murder down every road and avenue. Vampires chased down their victims and fell upon them with glee. Locked doors would not be enough to thwart them.
A few houses further down the road, several vampires dragged a screaming family from the shattered windows of their home and went at them on the front lawn. The father tried to fight, but his strength dwindled against the bloodthirsty monsters and he was dismembered upon the ground. There was much screaming from his wife and daughters until they succumbed to sharp mouths.
A woman jumped from an upstairs window to flee the intruder inside her home. She fell with a terrified cry until she hit the ground, and the snap of her ankle turned the cry into a shrill scream that only attracted the attention of vampires from other houses and gardens. And they feasted upon her.
An injured man staggered from a house in which the windows were aglow with dancing flames. He managed to reach the pavement before he collapsed to his knees and raised his face and wet eyes to the sky. Blood flowed through his fingers from the large, deep wound on the side of his neck. From the house he’d fled, a skittering figure with glowing red eyes emerged to sniff at the air; a blonde-haired boy in bloodstained pyjamas. And when he saw the man slumping on the pavement he closed the distance between them and pounced upon the man and buried his mouth in the gaping wound. The boy bit deeper into the man’s opened throat while his hands gripped either side of his head to hold him fast.
More vampires were glimpsed in torchlight, their ecstatic faces dripping with blood. Grinning mouths full of needle teeth sighted in alleyways, lurking in shadows, watching from the dark.
Mason occasionally caught a glimpse of the Dead Girl staring at him from the streets. He had learned to ignore her.
*
Pete negotiated the chaotic roads, glancing about, never taking his hands from the steering wheel. “Who’d have thought it, eh?”
“What?” said Mason.
“Vampires!”
“Yeah.”
“Unbelievable.” He shook his head. “At first I thought it was terrorists. But terrorists don’t drink people’s blood and keep sprinting at you even after they’ve had three bullets put into their chests. At least not any terrorists I’ve ever seen.”
Mason tried the stereo, and it flared to life with glowing lights. He cycled through the frequencies, greeted with voices from radio stations and old songs. No mention of chaos on the streets and people being slaughtered.
Mason frowned. Pete switched off the radio.
“The outside world continues as normal,” Pete said. “Nothing about the town, eh? I think we’re on our own.”
Before Mason could reply a vampire bolted out from behind a crashed lorry and went for the car with outstretched hands. Pete put his foot down on the accelerator and there was just the scrape of the vampire’s nails upon metal before it was left behind.
“Where’s the police?” said Mason. “Where’s the army?”
“All the police in the town are dead; or undead.” Pete coughed into one hand. “Haven’t seen any sign of soldiers on the ground. All I’ve seen is the helicopters flying over and around the town. It doesn’t bode well, my friend.”
“Military helicopters?”
“All sorts of them. Even Apache gunships.”
“Why aren’t the gunships doing anything?”
“Maybe it’s hard to kill vampires from the air, unless they’re in large numbers. I’m no expert.”
“Neither am I,” Mason said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The car moved down the main road which would take it out of the town. Pete kept the speed down because of the bodies and wreckage scattered about.
The law courts were on fire. A headless corpse was propped upon the front steps. There was no traffic coming into the town.
Pete slowed the car to a stop at the end of a line of stationary traffic. Red lights glowed. Both lanes were filled with vehicles heading out of the town. Helicopters droned directly above, rotors shuddering, sweeping the ground with searchlights.
“A lot of people had the same idea as us,” said Mason.
Pete smacked his hand on the steering wheel. “That’s all we need. Fucking gridlock.”
They climbed out of the car. The lines of vehicles stretched away in the distance. Frustrated drivers and passengers had disembarked from their cars to stand in the road and on the pavements. Some people were arguing. Tempers flared and boiled over. Horns blaring. Raised voices.
“At least it isn’t raining,” said Pete. He kept the revolver close to his body, hidden under his jacket.
Mason looked around at the darkness to either side of the road. If the vampires found and attacked the stalled traffic, it would be a massacre. He stood near a group of people gathered in a circle and listened to the conversation. They were talking about the road being blocked by the army and stopping anyone from leaving the town. Then Mason stepped away, and he was walking back to Pete’s car when the first gunshots rang out from down the road. He turned to face down the lines of traffic, the blood draining from his face to gather in the pit of his stomach.
The screams came next.
More gunfire followed.
And then the people were running back up the road, away from the gunshots, swarming amongst the vehicles and back into the town. Several cars tried to turn in the road, but there was no room to manoeuvre and they only succeeded in getting stuck between the vehicles left behind.
More helicopters appeared in the sky above the road, swooping lower.
“Oh shit,” said Pete. “Gunships.”
Mason was shaking his head, numb with disbelief.
An explosion from far down the road sent tremors through the ground beneath them. They staggered when a shockwave moved through the air. A distant fireball bloomed in the aftermath of the screaming and sounds of people dying. Mason felt the heat against his face.
“They’re firebombing the traffic,” said Pete. “Holy fuck.”
More explosions as the helicopter gunships incinerated anyone still in their cars or on the road. The roar of the firestorm, swarming flames and streaming smoke. The rolling thunder of deep detonations as they flashed and echoed.
Mason saw people burning. He put one hand to his face and let out a prolonged sob.
Pete grabbed him and pulled him back up the road, and they barely escaped the raging fire that consumed the lines of traffic and desperate people.
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The gunships wheeled away into the distance to leave nothing but a road of roaring flame and metal and bones.
Mason only looked back once, and wished he hadn’t looked at all.
*
“Quarantine,” said Pete, between two drags of his cigarette. “We’re not getting out. The army’s got us sealed in, my friend.”
They had found refuge with a small group of survivors in a nearby Methodist church. Now they were sitting slumped in the pews and on the floor, every door locked and barricaded with whatever had been at hand. They had refrained from lighting the candles placed next to the walls. The only child in the group, a little girl huddled and shivering next to her mother, was sobbing quietly in the dark. Some people were asleep, while others trembled and whispered, still in shock from the night’s events. Coats, jackets and linen altar sheets were used as blankets. Prayer cushions as makeshift pillows. An old married couple muttered together to their God.
From the stained glass windows the faces of saints and holy men stared down at the survivors.
“I wonder if the vamps will find us here,” Mason said.
“We should be okay, as long as we keep our heads down,” replied Pete.
“Sounds like the best thing to do.”
Pete finished his cigarette and crushed it under his foot. “I lost all my supplies.”
“You’ve still got the pistol?” Mason kept his voice low. Pete had given him a cigarette, and he nursed it in his fingers, savouring the nicotine in his blood and the precious smoke in his lungs.
“Only got six rounds left though.”
“Where did you get it?”
“My grandad brought it back from the Korean War.”
Mason pulled on the cigarette. “Surprised it still works.”
Pete snorted. “You wouldn’t be if you knew my grandad. He didn’t leave it neglected.”
“Is your grandad…?”
“He died of cancer last year. Gave me the pistol before he went. He taught me to shoot with an air rifle when I was a kid.”
“Sounds like a good bloke.” Mason didn’t know what else to say.
“He certainly was. I wish he was here to help us kill vampires.”
“Seems a ridiculous term to describe them,” said Mason.
“But that’s what they are,” Pete said.
“I know. Vampires.”
“Exactly. Fucking exactly.”
Mason shook his head, exhaling blue-grey smoke from his mouth.
“I wonder if the old myths are true,” said Pete. “Or the movies…”
“The Hammer Horror films? Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee?”
“Yeah, totally. Sunlight and wooden stakes.”
“Crucifixes?”
Pete lit another cigarette and scoffed. “Nah. I saw a bloke try to hold off a vamp with one. It didn’t work.”
“I never understood why all vampires were scared of crucifixes.”
“You gotta destroy the brain,” said Pete. “Like zombies. That or decapitation. Or you have to burn the fuckers. I suppose you could dismember them, too.”
“Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought,” Mason said.
Pete nodded, grinning. “I’m a bit of a horror buff.”
“Fair enough.” Mason tapped ash from his cigarette into a small clay bowl Pete had found. “So do you think sunlight harms them?”
Pete looked at the floor. “Hopefully. Then we might have a chance against them. Especially if they sleep during the day.”
Mason frowned. “You want to attack them while they sleep?”
“Fuck, yeah,” said Pete. “Better then than when they’re awake and trying to rip your throat out. Don’t you want to kill them?”
Mason breathed out and felt his chest deflate. He was silent for a moment. He thought about Ellie. “I suppose so.”
“Completely,” Pete said. “If you became one of those monsters, wouldn’t you want to be put out of your misery?”
“Probably.”
“Damn right.” Pete examined the glowing tip of his cigarette then looked back to Mason. “You from around here?”
“I was just visiting.”
“Bad timing.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Any family here? Friends?”
“My wife.”
Pete hesitated. “Is she…?”
Mason rubbed at his face. “She’s one of them, now.”
“I’m sorry, pal.”
“So am I.” Mason was relieved Pete didn’t ask for details.
Pete looked around at the walls. “Do you think they can come inside churches? Hallowed ground and all that bullshit. I don’t think they have to be invited in, either.”
“I noticed that, too,” said Mason. “They can go wherever they want.”
Pete finished his cigarette and scowled. “The motherfuckers. The absolute motherfuckers.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Just after midnight, and the streets outside were quiet except for the occasional distant scream. Mason stretched out on a creaking pew and closed his eyes. Most of the other survivors were asleep. The little girl had stopped crying a short while ago. Something metallic clattered in the road beyond the churchyard. Faraway sounds from the town, like metal falling onto concrete and the cackling of some awful thing capering through the street.
He looked forward to the dawn and the daylight, no matter how grey and dour it might be.
Shivering, he thought of Ellie as he drifted into an apprehensive sleep, wondering if she ran in the black streets or stood in the shadows of a ruined house. He wiped tears from his lowered eyelids and remembered her when she was younger and optimistic about all things.
The last image in his mind before he was lost to waiting dreams was of Ellie in their old garden in the height of summer, beautiful and barefooted in shorts and a t-shirt, laughing as he switched on a water sprinkler to catch her by surprise.
*
And Mason dreamed of her dancing with the terrible creature of rags and limbs. They were inside a great building made indistinct by shadows as vampires crawled up the walls to stare downwards. Tortured faces and cruel eyes; vile and lipless maws dripping with fluid.
In alcoves and under stone archways, pale-faced monsters with mouths red from their last kill applauded and grinned for their King and his bride.
*
He woke exhausted to the grey morning light that fell through the stained glass windows. He sat up and rested his spine against the back of the bench, rubbed his eyes and breathed out a long sour breath. When he remembered where he was, and what had happened last night, he slumped with his hands over his face while his heart fluttered and leapt under his skin. His bones felt heavy and aching.
Part of him hadn’t expected to wake up.
Most of the other survivors were still asleep, huddled in small groups. Some snored gently and wheezed little breaths through open mouths.
“Morning,” Pete said from behind him.
Mason turned around. The other man was on his feet, a cigarette dangling between his lips. He was checking his revolver.
“Morning,” Mason croaked.
“Sleep well?”
“Not really.”
“Me neither. If you want some water, I’ve got some left in my bottle.” He picked up the bottle from the floor and tossed it to Mason.
Mason unscrewed the cap and drank.
“You wanna go outside?”
Mason pulled the bottle from his mouth. Wiped his lips. Screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Now?”
“Make the most of the daylight. And we need to see how bad things are.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“We can bring back some food and water for the others.” Pete reached into the back pocket of his cargo trousers and pulled out a scrunched up and half-eaten tube of Polos.
“Mint?”
Mason shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” Pete thumbed
one from underneath the wrapping and flicked it into his mouth. He made a sucking sound that Mason found hard to tolerate so soon after waking.
*
Pete had woken up one of the others and told her that he and Mason were going out for supplies. The woman merely nodded, bleary-eyed and trembling, and then as Pete walked away she told them to find some painkillers.
Pete nodded and told her not to open the doors for anyone but them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They emerged into daylight and crossed the churchyard until they emerged onto the street. The overcast sky had receded slightly to reveal winter sunlight. They stood and listened, glancing around in the silence. Plumes of smoke still rose from within the town, but most of the fires had burned out. The air smelled of ash and scorched plastic. Grains of charcoal on the cold breeze brushed against their faces as they started down the road away from the church.
They found the first corpses soon afterwards. Crooked and broken forms twisted in the last moments before their life was snatched away. Ripped open and flayed. Skulls crushed and shattered.
Mason couldn’t look at them for long, the children least of all. Due to the damage upon their skulls, he didn’t think they would rise again.
Pete appraised at a woman’s head impaled upon a wooden stake stuck in the ground. “Fuck’s sake.” He shook his head and spat.
They passed a children’s playground and noticed the decapitated corpse in a business suit on one of the swings. The front of the suit was open and showed claw marks on the corpse’s chest. When they reached a traffic roundabout they just stood and looked around. Human arms had been loosely piled upon the bonnet of a yellow Lexus. A few of them wore watches, wristbands or bracelets. The hands at the ends of the arms wore rings of gold, silver and palladium.
Pete kicked a motorbike helmet at the kerb, then realised it contained a head. He laughed dismally. “The vamps had a blast last night.”