Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  The ice swilled round and round, gathering momentum as it rose up the side of the glass. Then suddenly it stopped.

  “Her name was Sandra,” he said, staring at the glass. “She was sixteen years old.” The tears gathered in his eyes. “Pretty as a picture, just like her mom.”

  I sensed this would going to take a while, so I made a motion for more drinks.

  “Not sure how she got into the group of kids in the academy, but she started missing classes, changing her hair, wearing more makeup. We made the assumption that she was just ‘going through a phase.’ We tried to ignore it, but one night it all blew up. There was a boy she liked, we never got to know his name, but looking back, it might have been Alan. One night she just didn’t come home.”

  Those tears were now a trickle down the big man’s cheeks.

  “I know I didn’t help. My time in the military didn’t set me up as the emotional husband. My wife, Trish, needed me, but I was out, hounding the cops, walking with them, searching the grounds of every building I could get access to. As Trish collapsed, I hit the bushes. As she needed attention and support, I was out gathering friends, checking creeks, railway yards, taking Sandra’s picture around to every coffee shop in the state.”

  The drinks came, and he took his from the tray without a look at the waitress. Despite Frank’s diatribe, I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she passed out the drinks.

  “Then the cops found her; our Sandra. She was dead, of course. Had been for several days. Animals had gotten to her, cops refused to let me see her at first. Even through the animal stuff, you could see she’d been savaged before that. Her neck was shredded, both sides. Her dress was a bloody mess, then the rape kit and confirmed the worst. Five guys, too many to get a proper DNA test, too many to count on ever getting a conviction, even if they got permission to DNA test the boys at school.” He drank slowly from the glass. “When I drew their attention to the bite marks on her neck, I was pushed away. When I persisted, I was told to take a back seat, leave it to the professionals. When I mentioned vampires, I was told I was crazy. But I saw the marks, Lyman. I knew back then something was wrong. But I was just the father, trying to get some closure to a daughter’s passing.”

  He used a napkin from the table to wipe his face.

  “When Trish left me, I was so wrapped up in my own investigation, I never even noticed. I still don’t, really.”

  We sat in silence for a bit. I looked over his shoulder. There were sights a plenty to look at.

  “When I shot those things today, I got some closure, alright. When I handed those two bodies over to Clint, I knew they were going away for good. No mamby-pamby reduced sentence for those guys. That’s why I like you Helsings; you don’t fuck around. You don’t try to rationalize with them when we already know there’s no point. No trial; you’re a vampire, so you’re guilty. Bam - dead.”

  He drank the rest of his drink, the ice clashing at his teeth. “Fuckin-A.”

  After a while I guessed that he had finished. “So today’s tirade at Mandy?”

  He made a sort of harrumphing noise. “I was out of order. She reminds me of Sandra so much, I guess I overreacted. She did take a heck of a risk today, though.”

  I pushed my glass to his. “And those were two great shots. Man, they must have been three hundred yards away!”

  “About four-ten, actually. The only reason I didn’t hit Alan in the head was the fact that it was my first shot for a while. I corrected after the first shot. Second one, perfect.”

  “Long-distance vampire hunting; you’ll have to teach me.”

  “You got yourself a deal.”

  Turns out Frank driving home wasn’t on the cards. He protested his sobriety, but I played the adult for once and refused to accompany him. There were rooms for rent, and we took two. It had been a long day, and I knew that I felt exhausted.

  To my shame, I dreamt of Corinna, and no one else.

  Morning arrived with my phone ringing. Mary-Christine.

  “Hi.” I knew my voice sounded pensive, considering how we’d parted the day before.

  “Hi, Lyman. I’m sorry.”

  Now, I’d not seen that coming. “Me too, honey.” I wanted to add ‘nothing happened,’ but for once held my tongue.

  “She’s Mandy. She’s a bitch, it comes with the territory.”

  The first ten minutes of our drive, Mary-Christine berated me about wasting time getting to Chris. I let her rant, although - in my mind - he was good as dead already. If I’d thought Alan’s thugs had left him alive and well, I never would have let Reynolds drive me to Gregor in the first place. But, the inevitable “knowing” couldn’t be put off indefinitely so I just sat there, clenching my seat and gritting my teeth while Mary-Christine drove like freaking maniac.

  “I didn’t know you did NASCAR,” I railed as she came to an abrupt, jerking stop at the end of the freeway off-ramp.

  “I don’t,” she responded, obviously not getting my insinuation.

  “So, your mom gave you her car?”

  She punched the accelerator and pegged the speedometer, the engine protesting at every gear change; apparently she thought her mom’s car was the space shuttle. Thank God that in the early hours, the road appeared deserted.

  “Mom’s asleep with a little help.”

  Mary-Christine paid me a sly grin, taking her eyes off the road for a dangerously long second.

  “Way to be rebellious…now…would you mind watching where you’re going?”

  I directed her to Chris’s house. The space shuttle landed half in the driveway, half on the lawn. All the lights were out inside, front door slightly ajar.

  Mary-Christine grabbed the dart from the door well. Unfortunately, with no gun to shoot it from, it’d be an up-close-and-personal scuffle if that bad boy saw any action. Splendid.

  She preceded me inside the house, feeling the wall for a light switch. I felt a new admiration for her sheer guts.

  “Power’s been cut,” she observed, flicking the switch off and on. Then she noticed me, still standing on the porch. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “Not without an invitation.”

  Inside the house looked pretty dark, but that didn’t keep me from being able to see the irritated look that flashed across her face. Yeah - like I invented the vampire rules or something?

  “Mandy, please come in.”

  I tried to take a step forward but still the block seemed in place, “It didn’t work…not your house, maybe?”

  Mary-Christine nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that means that somebody who owns this house is still alive then.”

  My undead heart shuddered, “Chris…”

  “I’ll check upstairs.”

  “He’s not here,” I said, trying hard not to get too hopeful. “If he was, I’d be able to smell him.”

  “Still, let me have a look around. They may have left something behind.”

  Mary-Christine went for the steps and I shimmied up the side of the house to peer in through the windows. Room after dark, empty room. Not so much as an unmade bed to point to any struggle. The takedown had been swift; Mr. and Mrs. McDonald never even saw what hit them.

  I tapped on the window looking into a study. Mary-Christine jumped about twenty feet straight up. Once she recovered her balance, she came over and flung the window up.

  “That’s not funny!” she growled.

  “It was from my point of view.”

  “It’s totally empty. I can’t find anything.”

  I inhaled deeply through my nose. “There should be blood. The McDonalds were pretty banged up. But, I don’t smell anything.”

  “Maybe they didn’t get nabbed here,” she said.

  “Then what’s with the blackout?”

  “Could be that some vampires staked the house out, waiting for them to get home…”

  “They’d need an invitation to get in.”

  “Not if it was somebody they already knew; a friend of Chris?”

 
I thought about that for a minute. Alan had gone through a lot of trouble to surround Chris, exchange his human friends for friends of the vampire persuasion. I checked off the ones I knew about in my head: Mize brothers - dead, Bald Eagle had been with Alan. Harris High had been infiltrated; maybe there’d been a larger contingency of student vampires than I’d realized.

  “There’s one other option,” I said, finishing my thought aloud. “Somewhere else we could look. Public domain - any vampire could come in of their own free will.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Hardware store. Meet me at the car.”

  I slithered down to the ground level while Mary-Christine disappeared back into the belly of the house. Soon as I hit concrete, I heard glass shatter from around the back, followed by a terrified scream.

  I sprinted for the backyard, leaping the six-foot wooden gate like a track-and-field hurdle. The sliding glass door had been smashed, shards of jagged glass stained with dripping red blood. Vampire blood.

  I jumped for the opening but that invisible shield held strong.

  “Mary-Christine!”

  Then something inside crashed to the ground.

  “Mary-Christine!”

  Nothing.

  I bashed at the barrier with my shoulder. I pounded on the glass of the other window. Yelled her name again and again.

  No reply.

  After what seemed like forever, I heard a faint thudding sound that got louder as it reached the bottom of the stairs. Ba-boom. Ba-Boom. BA-BOOM.

  I climbed the house, crossing the roof in lightning speed and dropped down to the lawn. Through the open front door, I could see her: Mary-Christine, dragging a body twice her size down the flight of stairs. When they got to the porch I could see his face. Chris. With the coagulant dart sticking out of his arm.

  Mary-Christine dropped down onto her butt, wiping sweat from her brow and panting, “Would you mind carrying him the rest of the way?”

  She fished for the remote on her keychain and popped the trunk.

  “Damn, girl,” I said, slinging the unconscious Chris over my shoulder.

  “Not entirely my doing…the jerk tripped over his own two feet, smacked his head into the stair banister, and knocked himself out. I just jabbed him for good measure.”

  As I laid Chris in the trunk, I found the purple goose-egg swelling on his forehead. Coagulant dart or not, he would’ve been down for the count. Add to that the zillions of cuts and slivers of embedded glass from ramming through a sliding glass door.

  We drove separate cars back to Gregor; I finally retrieved mine from the apartment - grateful for any way to avoid Mary-Christine’s driving. When we arrived at Lyman’s, he and Reynolds were gone. I got Chris secured on the Helsing table while Mary-Christine called for them.

  “She’s Mandy. She’s a bitch, it comes with the territory.”

  “I heard that,” I protested over my shoulder. Mary-Christine giggled, pleased to death with herself. “Just tell those jerks to get home. We’ve got to get back to work.”

  We drove past Gregor, and headed to Flagstaff.

  “We need a better look at the area,” Frank said. “And there’s only one way to do that.”

  We were headed to the airport, so I had no doubt we were going up in the air. “Airplane or chopper?”

  “Chopper. It’s the only way.”

  “And we can hire one?”

  “Son, with the right amount of money, you can hire anything.”

  I knew that we had the Unicorps credit cards, but I’d never used one for more than gas. The idea of flying over the mountains seemed an adventure in itself.

  Within half an hour, Frank proved himself right. Five hundred bucks got us in the air for an hour.

  To begin with, our journey followed I40 east. We passed Winslow and Harris, then the adrenaline began to rush.

  With two sets of binoculars scanning the road, we soon located my SUV. “I gotta get that thing towed!”

  “I wouldn’t trust it now,” Frank wailed. “No idea what they could have done to it.”

  “True.”

  “Keep flying along the road,” Frank said to the pilot. “We need to keep the suspicion down.”

  I followed the road to the barn, which looked less imposing from two thousand feet, than it had done the day before. When we’d passed it by a good mile, Frank ordered the pilot back along, this time slightly to the north of the road.

  “Look at the tracks going north!”

  True enough, tire tracks ran north up into the mountains, a road that we hadn’t seen from the ground.

  “Can you take us higher?” Frank shouted.

  “Sure.”

  We soared upwards, and the valley below opened up. North, about two miles away lay a large farmhouse, barn, and two smaller low buildings.

  We flew away, then took a pass right over. Frank looked while I had the job of taking photographs. We had everything we could have asked for; we saw the black Buick, and the wreck of the red sedan. Two brown jeeps stood at the back of the farmhouse.

  “Can we take another run at it?” I asked.

  “Better not.” Frank shook his head emphatically. “We need surprise on our side, and we’ve now got the intel to give it to us.”

  Back at the safe room, I downloaded the photographs and put them up on the big screen.

  Despite the basic camera, the results were nothing short of spectacular. We even got a good shot of the side of the smaller buildings.

  I pointed it out. “What do you think? Could this be the laboratories?”

  “Maybe. There’s air conditioning units outside. They wouldn’t need those for livestock, just people.”

  “So where do they get their power from?” I asked. “The main grid?”

  “Maybe, but it’s a long way for a single cable run.”

  “Then they’d have a generator of some kind.”

  Frank nodded. They would have to, and to power something as big as that site, it’d be the size of a tractor.”

  We clicked through the various frames, then eventually we found it. Big van, under trees, big cable heading off towards the house.

  “I’m sensing a plan forming, Frank.”

  “I hope it’s the same as mine.”

  “We hit them quick, before Alan gets strong again. We knock out the power, wait for someone to figure out what’s wrong, then hit the generator, then see whatever else comes to mind.”

  “Lyman, I think you should leave the plans to me. You’re a bit vague at the action end of this one.”

  Turns out Frank thought we should do another sweep of the farm, but this time, from the ground. We arranged to meet the next day, and I got left on my own. Mary-Christine was nowhere to be seen, and Mandy sat in the basement, nursing a rage-filled Chris again. I felt a little pissed at her indulgence with this guy. It seemed I had two choices; babysit Mandy, or do some studying of the terrain around the farm.

  I thought of going back to the strip farm, but decided to be good. I mean, Mary-Christine had apologized, and there seemed no point in spoiling things with her again.

  I ended up going online for the rest of the day. I vegged.

  Before dawn the next day, Frank and I set off from I40, east of Harris, and climbed north into the mountains. To anyone who saw us, we were hunters, our rifles strapped to our backs. If challenged by anyone in authority, however, two sniper rifles would be difficult to explain away.

  Two hours later, we had one sniper position sited and were crossing to another, when I heard a rumbling sound, way to the west.

  Frank waved me to a stop, and then ran forward, hunching low to the ground as he went.

  The noise stopped suddenly, it had definitely been a vehicle. I crouched to the ground more for my own peace of mind than anything else. Then Frank waved me forward with a palm downward to keep low.

  In the valley in front of us sat a small armored car, painted in desert colors. We kept our heads down as the driver poked his out of the low ha
tch. Two men got out and covered the vehicle with a sandy-colored camouflage net and stretched it out, pinning it to the ground.

  They then walked away back down the valley in the direction of the van.

  Frank led the way forward. “This is a new model.”

  “Why the heck would they want an armored car?”

  The reason became evident as we neared the vehicle. Two green suits were laid out on the rocks at the side. Two masks completed the gas-proof suits.

  “Looks like they’re making plans to defend against the rage gas.” Reynolds looked inside. “This a serious investment; many, many, serious dollars. This means they’re getting into the whole gang war thing.”

  “And how are you going to incorporate this into your plan?” I asked, privately grateful it would be Frank and not me working strategy.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Chris didn’t come out of it as easily this time. As the coagulant wore off, and he began to stir, vicious threats and well-detailed accounts of what he’d do to me were issued throughout the morning. I kept my distance and waited for signs of the sweet, passive person I’d known to pop through. Noon came and went but that nice guy seemed nowhere to be found.

  In fact, it seemed I’d been pretty well deserted by everybody. Lyman and Reynolds had come and gone; they’d barely paid me or Chris the courtesy of a hello (like seeing some dude strapped to a table was an everyday occurrence or something). They fiddled around on the computer for hours and then took off again on a “recon” mission.

  Mary-Christine had ditched me hours ago. Mostly likely her ass had gotten grounded for a month after swiping her mom’s car.

  So, in the basement, sat just me and Chris. Or the crazy, bloodthirsty maniac that used to be Chris. A whole day came and went and the best I got out of him was a smug, irritating prick who glared at me with a belligerent smirk on his face. Don’t get me wrong - it beat the hell out of watching him thrash around on the table, wailing and cussing.

  “I guess they’re getting closer with this vampire potion - aren’t they?” I’d said to him, watching him watch me from across the room.