Nightblood

by T. Chris Martindale

  The little voice in the back of his head answered. You did, asshole. You went wrong. You made the one fatal mistake that any cherry recruit worth his juice would’ve avoided. You underestimated the enemy.

  It had to be Danner. He’d killed the boys—the clues were too obvious. Another vampire would simply have bitten their throats, not ripped them out with his nails. Only a fiend hampered by a pulpy, fangless mouth would have gone to the trouble of opening his victims like pop-top cans. But how? How does a blind, faceless vampire find his prey, much less kill it? And how does he scale walls with a shot-up kneecap that wouldn’t even support his skeletal weight? Unless . . . He slapped the wheel. C’mon, Stiles. Goddammit, we’ve been over this. For the last time, no changing into bats or rats or wolves or fog. They never have in the past and they don’t now. A person cannot change shape, living or dead.

  That cynical voice in his head laughed. Yeah, sure. Dead bodies can’t walk, either, but Danner sure bossanovas with the best of ’em, doesn’t he?

  Stiles sighed with frustration. What happened to the rules? There had always been a game plan before. Vampires were just bodies and bodies cannot walk if you screw with their legs and they cannot eat if you screw with their mouths and they can’t do a damn thing if you cut them in half with a little autofire. But this one . . .

  He caught himself starting to shiver and stifled it. You’re out of practice. That’s all. Your mind-set’s gone bad, you’re letting the superstitions get to you instead of analyzing the situation. C’mon, dissect it. Hold it up to the light of cold human reason. The rules are still in place. Only the circumstances have changed.

  Danner was lucky, that was all. The boys had come through the woods with their Halloween gear, doubtless intent on scaring Del and Bart, and the groping creature had merely happened upon them or vice versa. Once one was dead, the others probably panicked and became lost in the dense woods. It would have been easy enough to follow the sounds of their frantic cries and given them new reasons to scream.

  Stiles fought his anger. Cool rational thought. What about the wall?

  Danner could have found a tumbledown section to cross, or squeezed through a break in the stone. Maybe he burrowed under it, which would have been easy enough considering the length of his nails, or . . . A picture popped into his mind, one of a frantic young man careening through the woods with a hellish stick figure riding his shoulders like the old man of the sea. Its face was gone, shot away, but the bared gullet that remained was suctioned to the boy’s torn throat like a leech. That was it, he decided. Danner rode over the wall. Carried to freedom even as he drained the life from his mount.

  The mental image disgusted Stiles; he discarded it, but the damage had been done. He was angry again, and that was the one thing he didn’t need. He was still itching for a fight; another dose of righteous indignation would have him spraying the bushes at the next strange sound.

  Calm down. You’ve still got a wait on your hands.

  Yes, the voice retorted, but for how long? It mimicked his own doubts. He was, after all, playing a hunch; there was no guarantee those bodies would resuscitate. There had been no actual bite—would that matter? How was this affliction or disease or curse or whatever the hell it was transmitted, anyway? Was it by supernatural means, as in the bite, the actual occult ritual of biting? Or was it some alien bacillus that reanimated a dead body with omnipotent hunger pangs? And how would such a supernatural germ get passed along—the mucus, the saliva? The vision of the dying child and his murderous burden came back like a shot. The wound could have been, must have been tainted by Danner’s own spore. Which could mean . . . Stiles shrugged. Whatever it meant, he wouldn’t take any chances. That was why he couldn’t let Bean or Sanders or anyone else in on his find. Murders bring investigations and they bring the county coroner and the bodies are inevitably bagged and taken away. It just wouldn’t do to have the three come back in the middle of their own autopsies, in a morgue where Stiles couldn’t put them back to sleep.

  Logic was another reason to wait. It made perfect sense for the boys to come back and for Danner to make an appearance. The latter had been lucky last night; it isn’t every day one’s supper comes to him so conveniently. He would not be so lucky again. Blind and crippled, Danner could flounder in the countryside for weeks, months, unless . . . unless he had three servants to search for him, to corral his meals, and watch over him and make sure he was hidden before daylight.

  And besides that, logic aside, Stiles had a gut feeling. Most would have called it paranoia and dismissed it, but Stiles had been at this for too long. He knew when to ignore a hunch and when to play one. Danner would be back, he knew. He felt the anger rise again and tried forcing it down. He should have been cold, calculating. But he just couldn’t seem to grasp the assassin’s attitude this time out. Maybe because this time he wasn’t just the gunman riding into town with no stake in the game. This time he was involved, because, like it or not, it was his fault. He should’ve cut Danner in two when he first laid eyes on him, but he was too intent on getting into that house, on finding the Enemy. For Alex.

  “You got me into this, Slick,” he said aloud. “Again. Why can’t you ever get me out?”

  There was no answer. There never was. Over the years, Alex had gotten to be as precise and predictable as clockwork. Ferret out some evil, lead Chris to it, and when the Enemy didn’t show, immediately start looking elsewhere, leaving his brother to hold the bag no matter what form it took. It was an unspoken arrangement between the two—Chris was repaying a debt—but these days the debt seemed overpaid already and the deal completely one-sided. But that was Alex, and that was to be expected. He’d always been that way.

  Well, not always.

  Stiles’s mind wandered back, away from Sykes Road and the culvert and Sebastian Danner, and as it did so he finally achieved that waiting state of mind. It was like riding a bicycle; once he stopped trying it came naturally, like second nature. His mind strayed while his senses did not; they stayed alert, watching the culvert, waiting.

  Mechanically, he raised the scope and swept it across the roadway.

  Nothing. He swiveled this way and that, straining to see through the rain-smeared lens, focusing his eye alternately on the red sighting dot and the lush jungle around him. Fronds hung limp and flapped heavily when the wind picked up, and the elephant grass, shoulder high in the open, waved like flexible sword blades. Little else moved in the face of the squall. No Charlie. No nothing. Damn.

  He lowered the Aimpoint away from his eye and sat back against the exposed roots of a tree, where the downpour seemed a little less severe and laid his rifle across his lap. He was numb, and the pounding rain wasn’t helping. He got that way when he walked, and they’d sure as hell done enough of that today, up one hill and down another and up a thousand more. His body just seemed to go on autopilot for a while, letting his mind wander but not so far that his senses couldn’t call him back if necessary. Boredom must have triggered it, or monotony, or exhaustion. The trouble was, those three things were what this tour of duty, this country, was all about. Waiting for Charlie, walking, waiting some more, always waiting. He was numb most of the time, as stuporous as any drug addict. He was like a grain of sand in an hourglass, slipping slowly, inevitably toward the middle, away from the World, further and further. . . .

  He tilted back his helmet and let the wind lash needles of water across his face. Jesus, he thought, rubbing and slapping his cheeks. I can barely feel anything. Better straighten up. Think about the men. They’re depending on you.

  He looked behind him. They were a hundred or so feet away but already obscured by the rain, little more than shadows in the grayness. They waited there, resting.

  If only he could find Charlie. Yeah, some ’Cong would do the trick. A sniper or two, or a small patrol. Hell, he’d take a whole fucking platoon if he had to. He was ready for them, waiting, all but hoping for those
few minutes of life that combat granted. That was when the tension and the fear and the frustration melted away like poison sweated from the body. That was when his senses came alive—he could hear even beyond the gunfire, could smell a thousand scents and feel and taste—even C rations were a banquet then. For those few minutes he was really alive.

  But doesn’t that mean you like to kill?

  He thought about it long and hard, then took off a glove and held his hand against the squall. The rain barely tingled.

  I have to.

  A poor-man’s bird whistle sounded through the flooded gloom. The lieutenant was ready to move.

  He acknowledged the ghostly shapes to the rear with a wave, then gave a like signal to the second point. Some fifty feet away in a banyan grove that flanked the designated trail (the one they were blazing, anyway) there was movement. A patch of sodden weeds tilted and raised as the helmet beneath it peeked out, followed by a chopped-down shotgun and crossed bandolier of shells. Pruett came into view looking like a soaked cat, his poncho plastered to his lean, lanky frame. He waved the pump gun in reply and waited for Stiles to move.

  The tall, thin kid from Indiana was one of the better point men in the troop. He was quiet despite his size and could defoliate a patch of land with that scattergun before most could cycle a round. But he still deferred to Stiles in the field. They all did. It wasn’t rank; Stiles was a faceless grunt, just like the rest. Nor was it age or appearance—they were all fresh-faced and innocent, or had been once. But still, something made him stand out. Something about him garnered complete reverence and even a little fear. What was it?

  Reputation. And not just because he was deadly up on point.

  He was also a psycho.

  Stiles had heard the rumors and did nothing to refute them. A case of loose hinges had its benefits in the field. No one bothered him, not even the officers. Especially the officers. The threat of being fragged by one’s own men was omnipresent these days, so an obvious loon was handled with kid gloves. For that reason he was never reprimanded and never given the shit jobs, except for point, which he didn’t consider a shit job and most often asked for. The latter only added to his mystique. He always had a place to sit at mess, always a smoke when he was in the mood, friends when he wanted them, and solitude when he didn’t. Besides, maybe he was a little nuts—what other kind of man would show off by going into the bush after Charlie with just his Ka-Bar knife? He was like a big cat, following the enemy slowly, methodically, his senses suddenly alive to the chase, his veins pulsing with adrenaline. And when he found them, whether it be two or ten, he’d take them out, one by one, striking like a . . .

  Whisper?

  He spun around to the rainy gloom, his rifle at the hip and swiveling there to cover the field of sight. But there was nothing within view, only the landscape, lush and green and bent to the fury of the storm. But there had been a voice, a whisper . . . hadn’t there?

  You’re cracking up, Chris my boy.

  He signaled back to the others. Stay still. Stay low. Something’s not right. Then he waved to Pruett to start forward into the dense jungle ahead, to keep within visual contact, but Pruett wasn’t even there to reply. He peered long and hard at the other flank, thinking the younger man had just blended back into the vegetation, but the other point had already moved on. What a hot dog, he thought with anger. Now who’s showing off?

  He moved along his own path into the vibrant green darkness ahead. Out of the sight of his men.

  The tall grass fell under his boot and, with a twist of the ankle, stayed flat for whoever would follow. He knew better than to brush it aside by hand; the edges were like razors. After his first field mission he spent the next several days squeezing pus from his swollen, infected fists. He’d been sure to wear gloves ever since.

  What a country. Even the fucking grass hates us.

  The rain slackened as he entered the densest part of the forest, its fury lost on the canopy of tree branches overhead. Though it was drier there, it was also hotter. It was as if the heat had been waiting for him, a familiar enemy, just as thick and choking and oppressive as before the rains. The mosquitoes were back too, swarms of them hanging in the air like cobwebs, not even bothering to pounce, content to let him walk into them. He brushed them aside indifferently, ignoring their bites. There were worse things to think about.

  The gloom was hard to penetrate. There were no hard edges to the shadows. The rain diffused what little light pierced the leafy canopy, leaving only varying shades of gray to overlap the black. In fact it looked more like some sort of fantasy world, where dreams and reality blended, making trees and bamboo shoots into shadowy creatures and waving fronds into groping limbs. He ignored it all. He knew that in this Never-Never Land, Captain Hook was his own age and had slanted eyes and carried Russian rifles and left booby-trapped C ration cans all along the trail. His practiced eye scanned the animal run he was following through the brush and searched for his real enemy; the tripwires, the stolen claymores, the camouflaged pits whose gullets were lined with shit-stained pungi sticks. Those were the real dangers. Charlie was a comparative phantom. . . .

  “Hoss.”

  Stiles froze. His rifle turreted at the hip, swinging left and right, all the way around as his mind refused to accept what he’d heard. There was no voice. There hadn’t been a voice! And even if there had, it certainly wouldn’t have whispered a name that nobody’d called him in years, not since his big brother had moved out and never came back.

  “Hoss.”

  He crouched down in the grass and leaves, his eyes frantically searching the millions of vantage points that the rain forest afforded. So it had been a voice, okay, but it hadn’t said that name, it only sounded like that name. . . .

  Lightning flashed out there, beyond the jungle, and its momentary brilliance broke through like a thousand thin spotlights that barely reached the ground. But they did silhouette the figure standing only a few meters away. The man was perfectly rigid, his back to Stiles and his neck at an angle as if listening.

  Stiles brought up his rifle and peered through the stubby scope he’d electrical-taped to the handle. The luminescent dot fell dead center of the shadowy figure’s back, but he didn’t squeeze the trigger. The man did not seem to be looking his way, nor did he seem concerned by the point man’s presence. Could he not know Stiles was there? It seemed an impossibility given his less than stealthy approach but . . . Stiles’s mind was racing, his heart pounding, flooding his veins with adrenaline and his senses with life. He could see the man’s outline clearly now, the pained angle of the neck, the matted hair, the torn coat. He could not smell him yet nor hear his breathing but the rain was probably masking those. It didn’t matter. He had his target.

  He slung the rifle over one shoulder, slowly and quietly, then slipped his hand beneath the poncho and brought out his Ka-Bar. Don’t kill him yet, he cautioned himself. Silence him first—there may be others like this Hoss character he must have been speaking to. Don’t go horse shit and start killing right and left, just recon and report back. Think of the men.

  He glided silently through the damp compost of the forest floor, so slowly that the mud didn’t squelch around his boots to give him away. Up close he could make out little more of the man. He slid up behind him and stepped in between his legs to cut his balance, then looped an arm around his mouth and face and fell backward to drag his assailant to the ground.

  But his arm didn’t find any resistance. He tumbled back into the weeds alone, knowing that the man now stood directly over him. The knife was forgotten as he fumbled frantically for his machine gun, praying that he could at least take the sonuvabitch with him.

  “I’d be ashamed, Hoss,” said the voice, its deep timbre amplified in the silence. “All that training and you’re still clumsy as ever.”

  Stiles gulped and gagged and for a moment thought he’d swallowed his tongue. His
eyes crawled up the dark form before him, now silhouetted against the dim light that peeked through the lattice overhead. No, it couldn’t be. . . . “Hoss?” he stammered. “Only one person ever called me Hoss.”

  The figure held out its arms. “Ta-da!”

  “But you can’t be my brother . . . he’s back in the states. . . .”

  “Was back in the states.”

  The voice. It had taken a few moments for its familiarity to sink in, to convince him. “Alex?” He rose hesitantly. “Is it really you?” He reached out to the shadowy figure, only to have it back away. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Just stay back, Chris.”

  Stiles wiped his eyes. “C’mon, Alex. Let me get a good look at you. Did you join up, or—”

  The figure stepped back, further into the shadows. “Goddamn it, Chris, I said stay back.”

  “I just want to see you—”

  “Well you can’t. You can’t see me and you can’t touch me.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause I’m dead, that’s why. There, good enough reason?”

  Stiles just stood there, too confused to move. “Don’t bullshit me, Alex. You mean you think you’re gonna be killed, is that it?”

  “I was killed. Tonight. Back home.”

  “And then you flew all the way here. Boy, I’ll bet your arms are tired.”

  “Funny guy. I can see you need proof.” He held out a hand that slipped from the shadow and into a column of daylight. The flesh was pale and bore a web of scars. Some were still open, though they did not bleed. “C’mon, little brother. Take my hand.”

  Hesitating, but thinking, Why are you hesitating?, he reached out and clasped it, and then he shivered. There was a hint of contact at first, a frosty chill that seemed to permeate his glove. And then the contact ebbed until Chris’s hand passed completely through his brother’s. Only the chill remained. “Jesus!” he stammered, tearing off his glove to rub at his hand, to erase the taint that lingered there. “Jesus H. Christ! You’re dead!”