Nightblood

by T. Chris Martindale

  The soldier was a blur of motion as he moved from room to room, overturning tables, piling them on top of one another in front of the windows of the parlor. “Lend us a hand,” he said. “Block the doors, the windows, with anything you can find—” “What is it!” Ida was frantic. “What’s out there?!” When neither of the men answered, the seniors went to the shattered window themselves. There they saw the army of shadows coming up the hill. “Oh, my lord,” Mrs. Fleming squeaked breathlessly, clutching at her heart. “Who is that out there? What do they want?”

  “Vampires,” said George Bailey from behind them.

  “Look, mister!” Hubert barked back at him. “This ain’t no time for your bullshit. What’re you trying to do, scare these ladies?” He peered back out the window. “What the hell is going on out there?”

  A head popped up into the window, a negative image of Hubert, pale white to his black, mad to his sane. The three of them were too shocked to move, not just by the sudden appearance of the face, but by the familiarity of it. It looked a bit like Pooch Harrison from the hardware store. But it was a caricature of him, a cartoon figure with a bear trap in his mouth and a long white arm that snaked in through the window. It reached for Hubert’s throat but suddenly the old man wasn’t there, suddenly it was Stiles brushing past them and pinning the arm to the window frame with his boot. “Suck on this,” he said and fired point-blank. Pooch grunted from the impact and disappeared from view.

  “It’s okay now,” Stiles called to them. “Help me block this window, and . . .” He turned to find his allies retreating in every direction. Jessie Shively disappeared down the hallway and lanky old Hubert went lumbering up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Ida Fleming hobbled only as far as the stairs before collapsing, unable to even climb into her chair lift. She sat there on the steps, gasping, clutching the cross to her breast. George Bailey still cowered in the corner, his expression slack, his sanity questionable. “Just great,” Stiles muttered as he shouldered a bureau into place against the window. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Charlie.”

  “Can’t blame ’em, can you?” the deputy called from inside the parlor. He dumped a coffee table and shoved it toward the nearest uncovered window, just as a crash came from the rear of the house. Stiles must have heard it too, for he started in that direction but Bean waved him off. “I’ve got it,” he called, then stalked into the dining room, Mossberg first. Nothing. The room was empty, inviolate, the small accent windows high on the wall as yet unbroken. His eyes moved to the saloon doors to the kitchen, just as the sound of breaking glass reached his ears.

  He burst through the doors with his shotgun ready and found a slight form squeezing through the small window over the sink. It was a young woman. Her jeans and blouse were earth-stained, and her long black hair was matted into a thicket before her face. She growled with anticipation as one leg cleared the window and stepped down into the dirty dishes. The other came through and she fell butt first into the sink and scrambled for balance.

  “Stay the hell out!” Bean barked, swinging the Mossberg. The heavy buttstock made a sickening sound when it struck, like an ax hitting soft wood, and the vampire flopped back across the counter and spilled to the kitchen floor in a limp pile. With a round already chambered, the deputy leveled his gun at the hip.

  The girl looked up.

  And he froze. “Oh, my Lord,” he muttered, unable to keep the tears from welling. “Oh, goddamn it, no!”

  Susie’s face was not feral. Not for the moment. She looked frightened and hurt, and tears filled her eyes as well. Empty, soulless eyes. “You hurt me, Charlie,” she stammered, fingering the divot his buttstock had left in her forehead. “How can you hurt me like that? I’ve always loved you, Charlie, but you shit on me. You left me out there. With them.”

  “Susie, I didn’t know, I swear . . .”

  She smiled on him with pity. “It’s all right now, honey,” she soothed, but her tone betrayed any heartfelt words or expression. “I still love you, baby. I still want you. Ooh, do I want you!” She stood and held out her arms to him. “Baby’ll make it all better.”

  “Just stay back, Susie,” he stammered. “Please . . . for the love of God, just stay back!” When she took a step he reluctantly raised the shotgun. “Please . . .” His finger tensed on the trigger.

  Susie took the barrel of the gun and placed it directly between her heaving breasts. “Then do it,” she told him. “I said do it, Charlie.” And then, almost under her breath, she whispered, “Please.” But Bean’s finger was locked on the trigger. It wouldn’t bend. His big frame was racked with sobs, and her smile came back in response. She took the gun from his numb, shaking hands. “I know you too well, lover,” she said and pulled him to her. And in that moment he saw her, really saw her as she now was. Her empty eyes were suddenly afire and her panting was hot and noxious on his face and neck, and her lips, those full pouting lips he’d always loved so, were thinned to translucence over the multitude of teeth behind them. It was a mockery of her, a Gahan Wilson portrait of his beloved Susan. And it was going to kill him.

  He caught her by the throat and tried to hold her back. She growled and wrenched his arm aside so viciously that both bones of his forearm snapped clear through. He did not even have time to cry out; she slammed him backward into the refrigerator and they both slid to the floor, Susie on top. He found his voice only when her teeth sank into his throat.

  The saloon doors swung open in answer to the garbled cries. “You let him go right now!” Jessie Shively yelled. She slapped at the young woman atop Charlie, pulled at her and grabbed whole handfuls of hair to try wrenching her aside. But the creature wouldn’t budge from her prey. In desperation Mrs. Shively grabbed for the closest thing within reach, a revolving spice rack on the counter, and slammed it down on the vampire’s head. Several of the jars burst from the impact, showering herbs over the three of them.

  Susie jerked upright, suddenly rigid, spitting flecks of Charlie’s blood across the refrigerator’s white enamel. She turned toward the old woman with a hiss, but then her eyes rolled back into her head, and Jessie realized that the hissing she heard was actually the sizzle of burning flesh. Acrid smoke rose from the creature’s scalp and shoulders as she rolled away from Bean and began to convulse on the kitchen floor, spewing what little blood she’d had time to ingest. Jessie turned away, and for the first time she noticed Bean’s shotgun on the floor. She bent with trouble, but managed to pick up the Mossberg and fired from the hip, just as her husband had shown her years ago on the farm. The silver hit home. Susie finally died.

  Charlie was moaning on the floor, cradling his arm while blood squirted out onto his collar and down his front. He recoiled and tried to scoot away when Jessie touched him, but her soft, motherly voice was soothing. “There, there, you’ll be all right now.” She pulled a dishtowel from the counter, wadded it, and stuck it between his collar and the wound, then tilted his head over against it. “Charlie, can you hear me?”

  He blinked his eyes and finally looked at her. “Go on,” he whispered. “Go help Stiles.”

  She drew the revolver from his belt and put it in his good hand, then used the shotgun as a cane to help her stand. “I’ll find your friend,” she assured him as she started for the door. But she kicked something in passing. Part of the Durkee’s garlic powder jar lay at her feet, shattered but with a small amount of the herb intact. So that was what did it! She picked it up and sprinkled the powder all along the windowsill. “That should slow them down,” she said before hurrying back into the hall.

  There was a great racket up ahead. The thunder of Stiles’s shotgun echoed through the house two, three more times. She moved as fast as her stiff legs could carry her and found the door torn from its hinges and several men and women, at least six or seven, gathered around the base of the stairs, hissing like a den of vipers. Ida was still on those stairs, gasping and clutching her chest, b
ut they did not move toward her. The cross in her hand held them at bay. Instead, their attention was centered on the man in their midst, Stiles, who used his empty shotgun like a club and threw blurring kicks just like in those kung-fu movies she’d watched with Ida on channel four late at night. But for all his efforts, nothing seemed to stop them. They were closing in.

  The one nearest her was a workman—at least his uniform was gray and sported the name SPENCE over his left breast—and when his head swiveled toward her and his eyes flashed silver, she almost jumped out of her skin. The shotgun went off before she realized her finger was on the trigger, and it sprayed Spence’s legs with silver and the woman next to him as well. They both fell to the floor and cried out, clawing at the fire in their own flesh. The rest of the vampires turned, saw her and what she had wrought, and the struggle between hunger and caution was evident in their faces.

  Stiles dropped to one knee and fumbled for the spare shells in his coat pocket, cursing himself for leaving the other Remington out in the van. He thumbed two into the chamber and groped for a third when a hand caught his shoulder and spun him around, and another closed on his throat. The man holding him was big and looked nearly as bad as Dutch Larson had the previous night. Much of his face and torso had been peppered with gunfire, but it obviously had failed to stop him. “Yer dead, bo-ah,” he said in the dialect of all Hoosier vampires, and opened his mouth extra wide to show a collection of gold fillings along with his tapered incisors. He drew the soldier in and bit down. But his jaws did not close on the soft throat he had expected. They clamped on something hard: the twin barrels of an old Japanese Very pistol that had been thrust over Stiles’s shoulder. Before he could back off, Hubert pulled both triggers. One round fizzled from age, but the other ignited on cue and sent twenty-eight millimeters of phosphorous rocketing down the creature’s gullet. He gagged and staggered back, but then his chest lit up from the inside like a Chinese lantern and he ran through the doorway and out into the night. His screams hung in the air behind him.

  The big black man granted himself a nervous smile as he broke open the flare gun and loaded it from the old canvas bag over his shoulder. “Banzai!” he called. He was wearing the same helmet he’d worn on Okinawa in ’45, and in the belt of his housecoat was another trophy from the war, a sheathed samurai sword. “Reload that shotgun fast, son,” he told the other soldier. “I don’t think this’ll stop ’em for long.”

  “It won’t have to,” said Ida Fleming. She was forcing herself up from the steps, still wheezing and obviously unsteady. But there was a steely resolve in her eyes, a purpose. She held out her crucifix, and the undead, to a man and woman, stopped in their tracks. They turned away quickly, and even the wounded ones on the floor started dragging themselves toward the door. Hubert went to help her and the two of them advanced on the invaders, pushing them back, forcing them to retreat. When the vampires were herded together near the door, Stiles and Jessie opened fire. The creatures screamed and dropped and clawed one another to get across the threshold. Only one of them made it.

  Ida slumped in Hubert’s arms. She looked pale, and was twisting her robe just over her heart. “Somebody help me get her into the parlor,” he called, but Stiles caught his shoulder.

  “Get her to the door,” he whispered.

  They carried her there. The front door was standing propped against the wall, torn completely from its hinges by the weight of all those surging bodies. “There ain’t no way we’ll ever get this back up,” Hubert told him, “let alone lock it.”

  “We may not have to,” the soldier replied. He shoved the dead bodies back onto the porch and out of the way, then lifted the door and scooted it back into place. When he finished, he pointed to Ida’s crucifix and motioned for her to put it in the small portal window of the door, in plain view from the outside. The diminutive old woman strained to reach it, but did as he asked. “That will keep them out,” she whispered, more a question than anything else.

  “This door at least,” Stiles told her. He peeked through the window. The horde was still coming up the hill, a block or two away. “Grandma,” he said to Ida, “you have other things like this cross? Other religious items?”

  “Yes . . . up in my room.”

  He stooped to look into her eyes. “Then you have to help us now. We need to use those things to seal the doors and windows. We need your faith. Are you up to it?”

  The old woman managed a weak smile. “You ’uns just get me around. I’ll manage.”

  The two men all but picked up Mrs. Fleming off the floor and started up the staircase. Stiles glanced back over his shoulder at Jessie. “Find Charlie, see if he’s—”

  “I’m okay,” Deputy Bean said as he staggered down the main hallway, looking like hell. He was still pinching the bloody towel between his neck and shoulder, and his left forearm was bent at a crazy angle. He tried to smile in the face of it all, but his eyes betrayed his pain, both physical and otherwise. He sagged against the wall and slid onto his butt. “Get going,” he waved them on. “I’ll be all right.” Stiles nodded and they continued their climb.

  Jessie went over to help Charlie up. “How are we doing?” he asked, looking around. “Where’s the landlady? She was right here by the stairs earlier—”

  “She’s dead,” said a weak voice from across the hall. George Bailey was hunched down behind the only real furniture in the room, a tall-backed sitting chair, and only now did he dare to come out. He still clutched his cross to his chest. “They took her while you ’uns were fighting. Dragged her right out the door. I saw it.”

  Bean stared at him, waiting for an excuse. “And why didn’t you stop them?”

  The old man’s gaze fell to his slippers. The cross hung limp in his hand. There was no answer. None that would explain.

  Mrs. Shively helped the deputy up and into the parlor, where he collapsed on the couch. Then she fetched a first-aid kit and a half-full bottle of whisky from Mrs. Atchison’s cupboard. She gave Bean a few stiff belts and took one herself, then splashed a little on the wounds in his neck. He stiffened, but didn’t make a sound as she put gauze over them and taped it into place. He just reached for the bottle again.

  There were sounds outside now, growing louder as they approached the house. Voices.

  Stiles and Hubert finally came into the parlor, still carrying Mrs. Fleming between them. “They’re almost here,” Stiles reported. They went to both windows and moved the furniture aside just enough for the old woman to hang a picture of Jesus painted on velvet in one window and a “One Set of Footprints” commemorative plaque in the other. Then, finished, they sat her gently in her recliner near the television. She looked as if she might pass out at any minute. Hubert got her a glass of water and the bottle of medicine from the pocket of her housecoat. Then he motioned for Stiles to follow him out into the hall. Bean roused from the couch and staggered after them.

  “Mister,” the old black man confessed in a whisper, “I don’t know a hell of a lot about what’s going on here, and I ain’t even sure of what those things are out there. But you two look like you know the score. So I’m asking you. How long do you think Ida’s little things, her knickknacks, are gonna hold ’em out?”

  The soldier shrugged. “That I don’t know. Her faith appears to be pretty strong, but physically . . . You saw her, friend. She looks like she might slip at any time. And when that happens, we’d better be prepared for another fight.” He held up his shotgun. “Charlie, where’d you put the other bandoliers?”

  Bean’s face drained of color. “Uh oh,” he groaned. “I thought you had them. They must be—”

  “Still in the van,” Stiles sighed. He rubbed his face tiredly as he listened to the sounds outside, the muffled, lifeless voices of the night. “Dammit, we need that silver!”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Well,” he sighed, forcing Charlie back into the parlor, “first, you�
�re going to yell like hell while I set your arm. And then,” he glanced over his shoulder at the window, “I suppose I’ll be taking a little walk.”

  “I just can’t take this any longer,” the woman was saying, or ranting, since it was the fifth time in fifteen minutes that she’d said it. Everyone was scared, naturally, but she gave her hysteria a voice, a wheedling, irritating voice that had tempers in the basement flaring. Billie did not know who she was but had seen her a time or two in the IGA and once at the Laundromat. Her last name was Helton, and she always seemed a nice, quiet woman on the surface. Billie tried to remember that every time her present incarnation started to blabber, and it kept her from knocking Mrs. Helton on her ass.

  “I tell you, I just can’t take much more of this. . . .”

  Ted Cooper must have been on much the same wavelength. “Hey, lady,” he finally snapped. “Why don’t you just sit down and shut the fuck up. You’re not the only one in this, okay?” Some of the others grunted their agreement. Mrs. Helton looked indignant (obviously she wasn’t frightened enough to forget her pride) but she did sit down and stay quiet. For a few minutes at least.

  The silence came back for a time, and Billie wondered which was worse, it or the bitching. Because when it grew quiet they could hear the other sounds from outside. The barely audible cry of a baby—probably from the other basement, where most of the children had been put. The distant pop of gunfire. Running feet. Nails clicking against the small access window in the rear wall. The wiggling of the door handle. The voices, man and child alike. They spoke in furtive whispers, wondering who might be in there, occasionally being right. And they would plead to be let in. The door muffled some of it but not enough. Still, no one moved to answer them. Not even Ted, when Doreen Moody’s sultry voice begged him. The knuckles whitened on the shotgun across his lap and his eyes moistened in the dim glow of the overhead bulbs, but he did not respond. And finally the voices went away.