by Ian Hall
Despite myself, I fell in. Reynolds led us the remaining distance down the slopes to the valley floor. Lyman, Mary-Christine, and me were like ducklings following the path he cut for us over trodden blades of grass. His eyes were fixed at his feet, watchful of wires and any other pitfalls. He never saw it coming; nobody did.
Out from the barn it broke; the ground trembled under its galloping hooves. Hair bristled, foam at its mouth. Golden brown at the body and white forelegs. It trampled everything in its path, Helsing and vampire alike.
“Holy shit!” Reynolds yelled, following the beast with his rifle sight. “It’s been shot up with the rage drug!”
He blasted it three times in the side. Spouting fountains of blood denoted that he’d hit his mark, but the horse continued to charge. Lyman raised his coagulant pistol and darted the crazed beast in the neck. It ran itself out and dropped on the far side of the compound. There Peterson delivered the death shot into the animal’s skull; but all too late. A smattering of broken corpses lay in its wake.
As the next wave of animals were released, we were all too stunned from the first to react in time. This time there were six. Like the horse had done, the pack of dogs ran through the compound, breaking off in random directions.
Helsing darts whistled through the air like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Two of the dogs dropped, panting helplessly as the merciful bullets racked their ravaged brains. A third caught a Helsing woman by the throat; she lay dead before her comrade ever had a chance to pull the trigger.
Reynolds stepped out in front of us as the fourth sprinted up our direction; the animal lunged. Frank shot. But the dog’s teeth dug into his shoulder before the coagulant could take effect. I grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, breaking its spine over my knee and discarded the carcass like an empty sack.
“Frank!” Mary-Christine cried out, dropping to her knees.
Reynolds lay on the ground, a chunk of flesh torn from his shoulder. His body convulsed then went violently still.
“He’s in shock!” she said, compressing the wound with both hands. “Oh, my God! He’s not breathing!”
In an unthinking moment of desperation, Mary-Christine did the inconceivable. Ripping her mask from her face, then Reynolds’s, she enclosed her mouth over his.
I must have been the only one who heard the metal canister hit the ground. Lobbed at our feet, it hissed open and released the gas inside. Lyman pulled Mary-Christine off Reynolds, but he proved too late. She already screamed at him, kicking, and scratching at any part of his body she could get to, wild as the dogs themselves.
I sunk a dart into her side and she dropped instantly.
“Take care of Reynolds!” I told Lyman, lifting Mary-Christine into the cradle of my arms.
The trek back up the hill seemed to take forever, though I moved with all the vampire speed I could muster. I deposited the unconscious Mary-Christine under the cover of some brush for safekeeping.
“Stupid, brave Helsing girl,” I scolded her as she slept.
Then I turned back for the valley to return to Lyman and whatever I found left of Frank Reynolds.
In the Thick of it All
I knelt low over Frank’s body, waiting for Mandy to return. A squad of camouflage rushed the farmhouse from behind. I remembered that it was our detail to go in from the front, but that couldn’t happen until Mandy came back. I wasn’t doing it on my own.
Then I saw Alan. Striding slowly onto the porch, canister in one hand, black pistol in the other. Behind him came Bald Eagle, then at least three others, firing back into the farmhouse. Too far for the coagulator, so I fired my pistol, sending eleven shots into the porch. I really don’t know if I’d hit anything. I was changing my clip when Mandy appeared at my side.
“Alan,” she said, before I could direct her attention. I grabbed her hand in time to stop her running at him. Mandy glared back at me. “Let me go.”
“We take him together. Promise, Mandy.” I stood up slowly. “Let’s just take a walk.” I grinned.
She caught the moment, and stood with me. It felt a sudden bizarre time, bullets were literally flying everywhere, and we stood in the middle, surrounded by a bubble of calm.
“This one’s for Jackson Cole,” I said, dramatically.
Together we strode towards the porch. Alan and his cronies numbered at least five, and were having a terrible firefight with our guys inside. Again, it looked strange; the fight seemed the wrong way round. It should have been us on the porch, firing inside.
Then I saw Alan stick a syringe into one of the cohorts, and thrust him in through the door. He gave a huge roar, then more shouts and gunshots from within the farmhouse.
We were less than fifty yards away now, and as Alan repeated the tactic, Mandy and I began to fire again. Alan and Bald Eagle turned together, their teeth gnashing in mid-air. I know I hit Alan as his shoulder took one of my bullets. I emptied my pistol, and stuck it back in my belt.
Now standing just twenty feet away, I fired one coagulator dart at Alan, who moaned at its bite. Bald Eagle remained the only other vampire standing on the porch. I hit him belly, center.
To my surprise, they ran off the porch in the direction of the barn. I set off in hot pursuit. They both ran in the door as I got two more shots at them.
At last Alan fell, my newest dart well and truly in his back. Bald Eagle turned and stepped towards me, his enraged face distorted beyond recognition. I fired the coagulator directly at his face, but it just gave an empty clicking sound, empty. I turned to Mandy, but for some reason, she wasn’t behind me anymore. With more on my mind than worry about her, I turned to the two vampires.
As I fumbled for my clip, Alan raised himself from the barn floor, and Bald Eagle shuffled towards me. Both had syringes in their hands. I backed away slowly.
I reloaded my coagulator, the new darts fitting smoothly into the gun. Faced with my four darts, the two vampires stuck their rage syringes in their own bodies, and slammed the plungers home. Shit. Instant rage.
As I raised my gun, Bald Eagle stepped forward. He took the dart directly in the chest, instantly stopping his forward motion. He looked at me, then Alan, then shuffled quickly for the open back door. Alan, meantime, had got to his feet and gave such a fearful scream, that it did actually block my thought processes temporarily. For a second I hesitated. It proved enough.
With the rage injection countering the coagulator, he lunged at me.
I twisted to the side and fired at the same time, Alan lurched past me and twisted in pain from my dart. He stumbled backwards, then his back arched, and his head flew back.
Slowly, four tines of a pitchfork advanced from his chest, as he railed against the tines, and further impaled himself. It had been placed against a workbench; he had fallen onto it. It had been a pure fluke.
I moved closer, stripping the empty syringe from his trembling hand. Satisfied that he had no more in his pockets, I ran to the door, looking for my second prize, but Bald Eagle looked long gone. I turned to Alan, still on the fork.
“You fucking fool,” Alan croaked. His mouth bubbled full of bile, and his eyes were so dark it proved impossible to see any white at all.
I kept my distance, and reloaded both guns. “You fell on a pitchfork.” My voice sounded tinny in the gas mask. “And you call me a fool.”
To my surprise, he laughed, each motion sending his chest deeper onto the sharp, rusty points. “You got me, Lyman, my friend.”
I took no chances. I gave him another dart.
“Oh, how cruel,” he hissed.
“I’m not your friend, you freak. I never was.” I looked out the door. The main battle seemed over. No more shots. Just the sporadic hiss of coagulator darts; other Helsings like me, making sure.
“You hit the wrong guy.” Alan’s voice was quieter now, almost a whisper, but I resisted the impulse to move closer.
“Alan McCartney, I got the right guy. You killed hundreds in your many lifetimes.”
He managed to shake his head. “You got the wrong guy. Tomas is the big cheese. You let him get away.”
“Tomas?”
“The bald dude. You just let him go.”
The need which master criminals have to blurt out their biggest secret would never be proven to me more.
“Tomas Lucescu, you dumb fuck. He’s the biggest cheese in America. Romanian, and three hundred years old. You dumb…” he choked slightly.
“Don’t care,” I said, raising my dart gun again. “Alan McCartney, you are guilty of murder. You’ll be taken to a place of execution, where you’ll face a huge freaking army of Helsings, all happy to see you die for the last time. You’ll be publically executed.” I knew I grinned like a madman.
I got grabbed from behind; in one swift motion my mask flew off my face and a large, strong hand clamped over my mouth. It all happened so fast, there wasn’t even enough time to scream.
My captor dragged me from the barn and into one of the smaller out buildings. Inside, long tables were lined end-to-end, covered with the equipment required to manufacture the vampire juice - and the means to distribute it - in mass quantity. An assembly line.
“This is where they take us,” a male voice whispered into my ear. “They work inside our heads, round us up like cattle, put us to work and use us for lab rats.”
I wriggled out of Chris’s hold.
“How did you get here?”
He shook his head like trying to dislodge something that’d crawled inside his brain, “The leader…he called to me. I couldn’t resist. I broke free and came here.”
I backed away. “You couldn’t have done that unless you were still under the influence of Alan’s hocus-pocus.”
“It’s controlled now, Lizzy…” Chris rubbed his temples, “Mandy. That sedative the old guy gave me is helping me keep it in check.”
He took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“You almost killed me the last time we talked.”
Chris’s eyes got round and woeful. “I did? Please believe me, I don’t remember that.”
“I don’t care if you don’t remember it. I sure as hell do.”
“Mandy. Please don’t be afraid of me. I don’t want to hurt you. Like I said - the sedative’s got me straightened out. Even if I wanted to hurt you…I couldn’t.”
“You snatched me away from that barn pretty damn fast.”
His shoulders went lax. “That was the last of my strength. Once I found you, I had to bring you here. I wanted to show you this place and make you see how they’ve been using us.”
I roved my eyes over the full length of the train of tables. Beakers. Tubes. Bunsen burners. It looked like my ninth grade science class gone awry.
“They made you work with the chemicals?”
“Mostly putting together the grenades and such. But, they did use the chemicals on us. They’d herd us into the barn, lock it shut, and release the gas.” Chris picked up a sealed glass tube filled with a purplish-blue concoction, and tipped it end-to-end, watching the liquid teeter-totter. “They just got better and better until…well, you saw me - saw what they made me. It’s damn near perfect now. Stronger; the effect lasts for days instead of hours. Pretty fucking ingenious.”
“Not ingenious, Chris - just evil.”
“You’re right about that. They are evil, Mandy. And very powerful.”
Chris twitched and pressed the heel of his hand to his temple.
“More powerful than you could ever know…”
“He’s calling to you now, isn’t he? You’ve got to fight him off. Don’t let Alan control you!”
As I watched, Chris buckled at the knee, clenching his hand into a fist around the glass tube. Blue droplets and powdered glass mushroomed in the air. Chris’s sorrow-filled eyes blazed with the fire of rage.
I sped for the door, but he overtook me in seconds, tackling me and ramming my head into the jamb. Stars exploded in my eyes. Like flipping a pancake, Chris turned me from stomach to back. He lay atop me, and I felt him, engorged, rubbing himself against my pelvis, even as he groped for a grip around my throat.
What is about me and penises?
I reached for it with both hands, cupping scrotum and squeezing until I felt the testicles burst. Chris’s head flew back in a painful howl. With the blade of my hand, I delivered a quick chop to the throat. He fell to one side, gasping for air, momentarily neutralized. It was him or me. I chose the only way I knew to save us both.
Before he could refocus his energy to my destruction, I pulled him back to me, sank my nothing fangs into his exposed throat and drained the vein. Then I bit into my wrist and offered it to him; Chris drank like a starving man. Then, just as he’d drank the last, I fired two darts into his belly. He slumped, rolling off of me, onto his side.
“I’ll be back for you,” I promised, and ran back for the barn.
I heard a shuffle at the door, and I looked up to see Mandy. Her mask had gone, and she held her hand to her head. There was considerable blood down one side.
I took a step towards her. “You okay?”
She smiled, nodding. Despite her wound, she brushed me aside. “Alan Fuck-boy McCartney.”
He twisted his head, and grinned. “Mandy, babe.”
I stood back, just in case he could still get inside her head in his tormented condition.
But I needn’t have worried. Mandy gave him a dart in the belly, point-blank range, then taking her hand from her wound, picked up another fork, lying nearby. She snapped it over her knee and threw the pointed part away. I knew what she planned, but I didn’t object. The man had changed her life, killed her parents.
The wooden handle didn’t even really have much of a point. More like three hundred little splintery ones.
“This one is for Jackson Cole,” she said, then jumped into the air.
Her aim held true, her positioning perfect, her timing assured.
She rammed the wooden handle into his chest, straight through his heart. His pitifully weak death cry only heard by the two of us.
She stood back, her face coursing in tears.
I put my arm round her shoulder as he began to crumble.
The Forrester Effect predicted the final outcome.
His skin fell in dark brown powder onto the barn floor. His now visible skeleton soon followed, the bones crumbling in place.
Soon, the only thing proof of Alan McCartney’s existence was a bloodied shirt, hanging on a pitchfork, and a pile of dust and clothes on the dusty floor.
The world had finally gotten rid of Alan McCartney.
The barn lay empty save for Lyman and Alan; the latter pushed up against a table, skewered on a huge metal fork - the metal prongs protruded from back to front.
“You okay?”
I barely heard Lyman’s question.
“Alan Fuck-boy McCartney.”
Even impaled like a pig on a spit, he managed that contemptuous grin. “Mandy, babe.”
I pulled my coagulant pistol and delivered the dart dead-center into his gut. It gave me nothing but absolute pleasure to see Alan McCartney’s eyes glaze over and his body twitch as he tried to reject the shutdown.
I rounded him, picking up the first wooden object I could find. A rake; it looked a thing of beauty. We’d come full circle. I’d killed him with a rake the first night I’d met him. The sharp metal teeth that had pierced his skull had served only to make him stronger. This time I knew how to put him down for good.
The wooden handle broke easily, creating a ramshackle stake at best. But, it would prove enough.
“This one is for Jackson Cole,” I announced, smiling briefly at Lyman as I said it.
And then I lunged.
I felt the crude instrument plunge through his chest, tear through his muscle, and sink into the undead heart within.
“That which kills you,” I whispered into his dying ear, twisting the stake and pushing it in a few inches deeper, “Keeps you fuck
ing dead - forever.”
As I backed away, Alan McCartney’s skin powered and sifted through the metal teeth. Tears burned my eyes; tears of revenge and a hate well-served.
That’s the end of Vampire High School Part 3: The Rage Wars.
Now for a special bonus; the first unedited chapter from Book 4: The Blood Red Roses.
Vampires Don’t Cry.
Book 4: The Blood Red Roses.
I have to suppose the aftermath of Hipshaw Farm lasted many hours, but I only had one thought in my mind.
Mary-Christine.
And getting her on the first ambulance available.
By the time the Unicorps ambulances arrived, she was coming out of sedation, and it took five straps to tie her down to the gurney. I got in the back and waited on Reynolds being brought aboard. There was no sign of Mandy, and to be honest, I was so wrapped in my own emotions, I didn’t miss her. Looking back I feel guilty for that, but Mary-Christine’s condition was appalling.
She couldn’t talk, her eyes spent most of their time either raging at me, or high in the sockets, almost lost. Her lips and lower face were swollen to almost double their size, and of course there was the so-recent memory of our tryst. She had wanted to lose her virginity before she died. Her words. And now I feared they were prophetic.
Frank, it seemed, had not taken the same dose of rage gas, although he was still strapped down for safety. Unconscious, and unresponsive, as the ambulance rolled towards Flagstaff, he was pronounced catatonic.
It had been a great Helsing victory, but at what price? Half my team were down, possibly for a long time, and as I waited for the ambulance, I had seen many Helsing uniforms being covered in camouflage sheets.
My phone rang. I reached inside the breast pocket of my uniform. Weeks.
“Mister Weeks.”
“I just got the news, how is your girl?”
“Don’t know yet, sir.” I wanted him just to go away, but I felt I owed him a sliver of respect. I mean, we’d just got Alan McCartney. “How did we do, sir?”