“So, what do you say, Jack,” Benny urged, “are you in?”
Jack let out a sigh. “Vampires, huh? We could all die on this little adventure.”
“What do any of us have to live for?” Benny in-quired.
Jack thought about the question a moment and about how much he loathed his job, “Well, when you put it that way. Fine, I’m in.”
“Alright then,” Frank said, clapping a hand on Jack’s shoulder, “let’s get started. First, you guys need to go see that friend of mine. I have a few things to grab from my office, and then we’ll all meet back at Jack’s house.”
The Writemans said their goodbyes and the hearse sped out of the parking lot toward Bloomington, which was about ten miles north of Triloville.
Frank turned and began to walk back into his build-ing when he heard a rustling in a nearby tree. He looked up in time to see a small bat flying away to the north.
He had a feeling more visitors would show up soon.
As Jack, Benny, and Autumn pulled into the drive-way of the small two bedroom house in Bloomington, the headlights of the hearse fell on a skinny, balding man, waving at them from the leaf covered lawn. Benny couldn’t help but laugh at the man’s pink bathrobe and large, yellow toothed grin that almost made him look like a mad scientist’s assistant in an old black and white monster movie, all he needed was the hump on his back. Jack rolled the window down.
“How’s it going?” the man shouted over the rustling leaves that were being blown around by a sudden harsh wind, “Hey, it would probably be easier if you guys turned around and backed into the garage.”
“No problem,” Jack said. He rolled the window back up and turned to Benny, “Dad sure keeps some interesting friends. Why do you think we need to back into the garage?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Benny replied, “but I think we just met an arms dealer.”
Once the garage door was closed and the hearse was safely inside, the three Writemans got out and looked at the stranger, unsure of what to do next.
“Don’t be nervous or anything,” the man said. “Your dad called me and told me you were coming. You must be Jack,” he shook Jack’s hand and then took Benny’s, “and I take it your Benny.”
“That’s right,” Benny said quietly.
The man gave Autumn a confused look, “And you are?”
“Autumn.”
“Right, right, Autumn. Name’s James Palatino, nice to meet you all. Follow me.”
James led them inside the house, through the living room and down the hallway toward the bedroom. “That’s a bitching car by the way.”
“Thanks.” Benny and Jack said in unison.
“Your dad found me shortly after he started dealing with the vampires,” he said, “he told me what was going on and I agreed to help him. He didn’t want to make a move against them, but he wanted to be prepared for the likely pos-sibility that they would turn on him. So we started getting to-gether every Sunday over on the Indiana University campus to play chess and talk sports.”
“Oh, so you’re his chess buddy,” Jack mused.
“That’s me, only we weren’t really talking sports. We came up with our own series of code words that, as far as I know successfully hid our dealing’s. He’d mention something about Payton Manning’s stats, which would be total bullshit, and I’d know what he wanted and how many bullets he wanted to go with it. I don’t think vampires follow sports so if they were listening they didn’t pick up on anything. As a result your father is now well prepared for the current situation.”
James reached for a string that was dangling from the ceiling and yanked on it. A set of steps came sliding down and the four of them climbed up to the attic. Benny, Jack, and Autumn stood quietly in the dark for a few minutes as James shuffled away from them. A light switch was hit and the room lit up, when Benny’s eyes focused his mouth dropped open in pure shock. What lay out before them was racks and racks of guns of various makes and models. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of weapons lined the walls and filled the middle of the attic, which ran the length of the entire house.
“My Dad ordered all of these?” Benny asked.
“No, actually this is your Dad’s section here,” he said, pointing to a corner area, “the rest of this stuff belongs to other clients.”
“All you have are silver bullets here,” Jack observed, “how many other people are out there shooting vampires?”
“You’d be surprised and not just vampires either. Anyway you can take as much of this stuff as you want and toss it in your car. Oh, and here, your father wanted you two to have these; he has one of his own as well.”
James pulled two straight samurai swords off of an elegant stand and handed them to Benny and Jack.
“How did he know we would be involved in this?” Benny asked.
“Like I said, old Frank wanted to be prepared for anything, including making sure his family could defend themselves.”
Benny pulled the blade out of its sheath and marveled at its beauty.
“Those are made of pure silver and they’re ready to use, the hilt is wrapped right around the base of the blade.”
Benny and Jack began hauling the equipment back to the car as Autumn and James stood aside quietly.
Most of the guns were pistols, a lot of 9mm semi-automatics, some magnums, a couple of 38 revolvers, but there were a couple of Uzi’s as well as 12 and 20 gauge shot-guns, two AR-15s and three AK-47‘s. They also found about twenty four small crates full of silver bullets and one crate loaded with strange looking hand grenades.
“Those are silver shrapnel grenades,” James offered, “throw one of those babies into a group of vampires and it will explode, sending little shards of sharp silver in all directions. You’ll take out a shit load of them.”
“A shit load,” Jack said, smiling, “is that a calculated estimate or did you just guess?”
James let out a nerdy wheezing laugh, “Good one.”
The Writemans exchanged a comical looked and began to laugh as well.
All the weapons were loaded up and Benny noticed there were still three small crates remaining in his father’s corner of the attic.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Ah,” James answered, “those are a necessity when it comes to killing vampires.”
Jack pried the lid off the nearest crate. “Heh heh, wooden stakes, of course.”
“There’s a hundred in each crate,” James added, “they should last you for a while.”
“I should hope so,” Jack finished.
As Benny loaded one of the crates of wooden stakes into the hearse, James turned to Autumn and studied her a moment. “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but if you got a little sun you’d be a very pretty girl. I mean you’re as pale as a dead…wait. Autumn! You are dead aren’t you?”
“Yes, very,” Autumn said politely.
“That’s right, come over here, I have something to show you.”
Benny and Jack entered the room in time to hear this and the three of them followed James through his house once more. He stopped at a large book shelf that sat against his living room wall, ran a skinny index finger along the books on the fifth shelf, and pulled out an old, tattered book. The cover of the book read “Contacting the Dead”.
“I’m sure you’ve seen psychics on TV who claim they can talk to the dead,” James explained as he flipped through the pages, “well, as it turns out, not all of them are con artist. According to this book, which was written by a proven psychic, there are spirits floating around on this plain of existence. Some of these spirits are lost souls who can’t find their way to the realm of the dead. Others, the ones who talk to these psychics, are people who have died and left some sort of unfinished business behind in their past life, so they feel they have to take care of these things before they can move on.
“Now let me read you this quote here. ‘On some, very rare occasions throughout documented history; spirits have been known to ret
urn to their own bodies because the need to fix something is so great. This phenomenon is often confused with zombification, however it is actually called walking ghost syndrome. The walking ghosts retain all of their memories and intelligence whereas zombies are merely mindless dead bodies resurrected from their graves by gifted people called necromancers. The only resemblances between the two have been some cases of super human strength.’”
The three men looked at Autumn.
“I was buried six feet underground,” Autumn said with a shrug “how do you think I got out?”
“So, there you go, you’re a walking ghost,” James finished.
Autumn turned and punched Jack in the arm.
“Ow!” Jack exclaimed, “What did you do that for?”
“Because you honestly thought I was going to eat your brain,” Autumn said angrily, “Walking ghost, Jack, not zombie.”
She stormed out the door and got into the back of the hearse.
Jack walked back to the garage, rubbing his arm and cursing under his breath the whole way. Benny thanked James and joined his wife and his brother in the hearse.
Soon they were back on the road with Jack driving, Benny riding shotgun, and Autumn squeezed in the back with an arsenal that could outfit the military for a small nation. Within minutes Autumn was knocking on the interconnecting plastic sliding window.
Jack glanced back, “I’m still mad at you for punching me in the arm.”
It was a testament to Jack’s fear of the dead that he had installed one of these windows in all of his hearses. The massive amounts of weed he smoked was the only way to relieve the stress his job created.
The knocking became more urgent, so Benny un-locked the tiny window and slid it back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“One of the vampires that killed me,” she said, “he’s in Triloville; I think he’s at your Dad’s building.”
Frank had just finished getting dressed when he heard the door to his office open. Standing behind his desk, he turned to see a well dressed vampire walking toward him. Behind this vampire were four menacing thugs in slightly cheaper suits. The lead vampire walked with a cane, although it was clearly for decoration, his long blond hair was draped over his shoulders, and his face was smooth and stern.
“Odin Sway,” Frank said, “what a pleasant surprise. I suppose you’ve come to kill me.”
“Very astute,” Odin replied in a low British accent, “you are correct. I’m very sorry, Frank, I wish it hadn’t come to this, but I have no choice.”
The other four vampires lunged forward quickly, their faces contorting into monstrous expressions, sharp fangs bared.
Matching their speed, Frank’s hand came up from his side and a 9mm pistol put a hole into the forehead of the four vampires. They fell to the floor, their dead bodies now completely lifeless.
Frank leveled the gun at Odin’s head.
“Very impressive,” the vampire said calmly as he studied his fallen comrades, “silver bullets I take it.”
“That’s right.” Frank had no idea if the creature was really impressed or if he was just being sarcastic. He had known Odin for a long time and even considered him a friend at one point, but he had never been able to read what the man was feeling. His expression never changed.
Odin grasped the shaft of his cane with one hand and pulled on the handle with the other revealing a long blade. Frank had seen the cane on countless occasions, had even been allowed to study the dragon and serpent that formed the handle. When he had asked the vampire about why the handle was made of silver, he had answered; “Keeping ones weaknesses at hand will only serve to make him stronger.” The Old Man had never once suspected the cane was hiding a blade inside of it. He suddenly felt incredibly naïve.
“That wouldn’t be the blade that killed my daughter-in-law, would it?” Frank asked, feeling blood rising to his face. Anger was a useful ally if used carefully.
“Yes,” Odin said calmly, “but again, I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice you sick fuck.”
With unbelievable speed, Odin Sway began to jump around the room as Frank tried desperately to target him with his gun.
Finally the vampire’s feet hit the far wall and he pushed off hard toward the Old Man with his claws extended, yet his face still bore that same blank expression.
Frank pulled the trigger.
5. Killing Vampires
Autumn had insisted that before they went to the concert, Benny needed a complete makeover.
“You’re not going to perm my hair and paint my fingernails and shit like that, are you?” Benny asked jokingly.
“Perm, no. Fingernails, that’s definitely a possibility.”
Benny gave her a look of apprehension, but she con-tinued on, pretending not to notice.
“Now, first things first, if you want to be a Manson kid, you have to dye your hair a different color. Black is al-ways good, some go with pink, blue, or even a combination of colors.”
“If I absolutely have to do it, let’s go with plain old black.”
“Cool!”
With that she led him into the bathroom and sat him in a chair with his back to the sink.
Two hours later he had black hair and he had to admit he looked pretty damn good with it. While he was admiring himself in Autumn’s floor length mirror, his future wife was in the bathroom getting ready for the show.
He turned to the bed and found a stack of cloths that Autumn had laid out for him, including a spiked dog collar.
“What the fuck?” he said to himself, holding the col-lar as if it were some slimy species of fish that had never been seen before.
He heard the bathroom door open and turned to find Autumn standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked. Her hair was now black as well, except for the bangs, which were hot pink and framed her pretty face. She was wearing a black, lacey tank top, with a skin tight under shirt that had black and white stripes running down the long sleeves. Her black skirt was incredibly short and the pantyhose that covered her legs matched the black and white stripes of her sleeves.
Benny was once again left speechless, but incredibly turned on. Unable to stop himself, he went to her and began to kiss her neck, while gently caressing her breasts. She gave in to him immediately and they were soon on the bed.
Slowly, he peeled the pantyhose off of her legs, then off came the black lace panties.
She let out a short, high pitched squeal as he entered her, than moaned deeply with each incoming thrust, until they both exploded in a volcanic orgasm.
When they finally got ready to leave, Benny dressed in the black jeans and shirt that Autumn had gotten for him and she did paint his fingernails black, but he had to put his foot down at the dog collar.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Benny yelled.
Jack was obviously starting to panic and had brought the hearse up to seventy five mph. “We’ve got to get to Dad,” he shouted back.
“Okay, you do realize we are driving a car full of illegal weapons, right? You need to slow down and enhance your fucking calm. If a cop pulls us over this little adventure of ours will come to a real quick end.”
Jack seemed to take the point and began to slow the car down.
Turning his attention to Autumn, Benny said; “Is he still there?”
Autumn closed her eyes, “No, he’s beginning to move away now. Jack, do you have your cell phone with you?”
“Yeah,” Jack said pulling the phone from his jacket pocket. He flipped it open, accessed the phone book and found Frank’s office number and extension. After a few minutes he snapped the flip phone shut and looked up at the other two. “There’s no answer, what should we do, Benny?”
Benny thought over their options for a moment and then said; “We stick to the plan. We go back to your house and wait for Dad to show.”
“But, Benny, what if he’s hurt?”
“I don’t thin
k these guys would leave anyone alive, besides, the Old Man can take care of himself, we‘d most like-ly just get in his way.”
Jack only nodded his head in agreement and drove the rest of the way back in silence. Benny and Jack both knew that they’re Father had extensive training in the Marine Corp. and his knowledge of weapons and hand to hand combat was vast.
“Autumn,” Benny said, “can you get any kind of feel on what kind of mood the vampire was in when he left?”
“No,” she responded, “all I can see is what direction he’s going in now. North, in case you’re interested.”
Benny turned in his seat and stared out the window the rest of the way home in the hopes of seeing the vampire as their paths crossed. He kept assuring himself that he was right about his father; the three of them would be too late to do anything by the time they got there anyway.
Around 2:00am they pulled into Jack’s driveway, got out of the car, went inside and sat down at the kitchen table.
The house was still and quiet save for the steady tick of the old clock Jack had in his living room. Benny was hav-ing a hard time concentrating on anything but that blasted clock. He could feel a headache forming that seemed to pulse and intensify with each tic.
Autumn sat quietly thinking about the things she was going to miss about being alive. Besides the obvious, the one thing she could never live without was chocolate milk. Man, did she love the chocolate milk. Even though she was dead, she still had no idea what was waiting for her on the other side, but she was sure that if she went to heaven the river beds would be flowing with chocolate milk.
Jack was having trouble staying awake, it was way past his usual bed time and he could feel his head starting to fall forward repeatedly. He began to think (or perhaps it was a strange dream) about his job. He began to see the countless bodies he had made up and prepared for showing, and how with each and every one came this great fear that they’d sit up and come after him. Moaning and groaning, trying desperately to eat some part of him. Each time he would shake that fear away and tell himself he’d been watching too many horror movies. Now here he was, sitting at his kitchen table with a dead girl and waiting for his father to get here so they could go and kill some vampires.
Avenging Autumn: Seasons Change Book 1 of 4 Page 4