by Brian Lumley
Behind the wall Garth and his people had ducked their heads as shrapnel flew overhead and the blast reverberated across the valley and back. In that position they didn’t see the brilliant flash of light, feel its heat or suffer its disruptive power—but the leading ranks of fly-by-nights had seen, felt and suffered all of that! Filth rained from above as Garth and the others lifted their heads. Out on the overgrown access road, shattered fly-by-nights—pieces of pulpy bodies: limbs, heads, and less easily identifiable portions—were still flying in every direction. But the head of the snake had been split in two, and the advance of the creatures had slowed down as they turned aside, spreading out to north and south along the riverbank.
All well and good! thought Garth. Except now the misshapen, long-jawed heads of the corpse-like things were uniformly turning, their ravaged nostrils sniffing, and burning eyes staring in one direction: toward the ruins, where Garth and the others were repositioning, spacing themselves out behind the old wall. For over and above the acrid pulp-and-cordite stench of chemical fire and shredded undead plasm, the vampires could now smell their prey and knew where they lay in ambush…knew also that this prey, this small group of human beings—this food for the inhuman things they had become—would fight back!
There were almost two hundred of the monsters, though their numbers were hard to gauge with any accuracy; of which the last two dozen or so were only now filtering to left and right, away from the access road and along the ruins of the road that paralleled the river. But to both north and south the furthest creatures were already moving forward off the road into the cover of the denser shrubbery and scrub; and by doing so—whether deliberately or unintentionally, unconsciously—they were quickly fashioning themselves into a pincer formation.
Seeing what was happening, Garth called out, “Billy, Eric—save your grenades for later, when the fly-by-nights come at us from the sides. And Gavin: you can start firing just as soon as you like, at any of these monsters that come at us head on; the same goes for all three of you. Just tell yourselves this: that while we daren’t let them get too close, the closer they are the easier targets they’ll make…and in any case make every shot count!”
But already Garth knew that this attack was very different. For where was the deranged frenzy of berserk bloodlust that had featured in every previous confrontation in which he’d been involved? Where the lunatic savagery that was the very definition of fly-by-night “tactics?”
Garth could see that the vampires directly in front, where they had come together to close the gap blown in their ranks by Billy Martin’s grenade, were now advancing with what could only be described as stealth—which was something that was more or less unheard of!
Oh, their eyes dripped sulphur as before, and their too-long arms reached out in front just as horribly; but their movements were cautious and even sly. Because now they hunted with malice aforethought: a previously unimaginable, conscious and intelligent fly-by-night activity!
No mere accidental or coincidental confrontation this, but an ambush laid with a skill foreign to the usual vampire vacuity, though perhaps not entirely unheard of. No, for the exception that proves the rule had established itself long ago in the shape of a certain Jack Foster: a scav taken by fly-by-nights, changed, elevated, and finally returned…as the leader of a swarm, a small army of the undead!
With which thought, as suddenly and surely as he recognized this second exception for what it was—that the so-called “rule” was once again being proved or broken—Garth also accepted that for the moment there was nothing he could do about it. No, for in order to do anything he must first survive!
The dust and loathsome debris thrown up by Billy’s grenade had settled; its yellow smoke had drifted away, taking some of the stench with it. And now while Garth searched in vain for a way around his team’s deadly predicament—some manoeuvre that would allow them to back off while yet holding the vampires at bay—his three had commenced picking off the central mass of oncoming fly-by-nights shot by shot, head by exploding head.
But while there was no obvious alternative to the measures that Garth and his men were taking, still his brain was feverishly active as he quit looking for nonexistent solutions and wondered instead what was happening back there in the camp under the great trees only two hundred yards away.
There had been no whistled warnings from his team—which in any case would have been superfluous—but the blast of the grenade going off, and now the sharp, rapid-fire crack! crack! of gunshots would certainly have got everyone up on their feet, preparing for an attack; and it was more than likely that reinforcements were on their way right now, coming at the run or as quickly as possible through scrub and underbrush, hearts racing and weapons at the ready. Garth was sure it must be so, but…would they get here in time? And even if they did would it make any difference against this horde?
The fly-by-night pincer was steadily closing in from north and south, and while Garth and Gavin Carter carried on pumping off shots into the advancing main body—now dangerously close—Billy Martin and Eric Davis were arming and steadily hurling their pitifully few grenades at the vampires that came creeping in from the sides. Their explosions split the night, until finally:
“All done with the grenades!” Billy’s voice called hoarsely from where he crouched at the northern end of the old wall. And following one final flash of light and deafening blast from the south:
“Me too!” Eric’s wavering cry rang out.
“Get over here!” Garth called in the momentary silence. “To me, where we can form up back to back. We’ll keep on firing until these devils are coming over the wall, and only then make a run for it—”
“—If we have to!” Billy’s yell cut him off, as he and the others closed with Garth. For now they could hear shouting from the direction of the encampment, and the weak beams of electric torches were cutting individual swathes through the smoky darkness, directed by a dozen or more desperate human figures where they came crashing through the scrub heedless of life and limb.
The vampires had also heard the rallying, querying cries of the reinforcements; and now, having come almost within reach of the wall, their advance had slowed to a virtual standstill. But it wasn’t just the headlong approach of the men from the camp that was giving them pause; it was the brilliance of other lights, three sets of paired headlight beams, that came searching from the north and along the river road: the blinding headlights and the men on foot—Garth’s other team from their vantage point at the northern bridge—half-running, half-riding, even seeming to fly, where they clung to the sides of the thundering mystery vehicles!
But…flashing lights and thundering engines? Garth’s mind whirled in circles! What was it Bert Jordan had reported seeing and even hearing: lightning, or lights, over the great forest’s northern canopy, and thunder from that same direction?
No, not at all! Thunder and lightning? Never! Garth laughed out loud; he shook a fist at the night and shouted at his three where they clustered close to him, bewildered but still breathing, still alive: “Why did you stop firing?” he yelled. “They’re not through yet, these damned things—but neither are we—so give ’em all you’ve got!”
Mechanical thunder and jouncing lights, yes, as these magical, wonderful vehicles came lurching over broken concrete and scattered, fragmented tarmac; bursting through uprooted shrubs and wrenched-aside saplings. And now the breathless men of the clan forming up to left and right, with Garth and his three in the middle of a semicircle, and every man of them blazing away at the fly-by-night horde.
And the vampires themselves, blinking their yellow, phosphorescent eyes—blinded and lost in the glaring headlight beams—crumpling like so many rotten mushrooms under a sleeting rain of lead…and worse yet coming their way.
But Garth couldn’t feel sorry for them—not even an ounce of pity—as the three squat kindred vehicles halted in a line abreast and opened up with fifty-foot lances of flame from nozzles in their caged-in prows. L
ike chemical scythes, these spurting, shimmering jets of incendiary heat were a translucent blue in their outer shells and a searing white in their molten cores. Gnawing into and through everything they touched, these roaring tongues of fire left nothing but red-glowing ashes and slumping piles of cinders in their wake. And the monstrous vampire horde simply melted away under their furious heat and light.
Some few dozens of the swarm fled back the way they’d come, along the access road and out across the half-submerged bridge; but a majority wafted wraith-like along the river road, followed closely by three merciless vehicles that burned their flamethrower fuel till nothing was left, then opened up with automatic gunfire. But in a while even that ceased, leaving the night full of smoke and stench and disbelieving, occasionally stumbling clansmen.
Then in the astonished silence—as the rumble of kindred vehicles died a little, fading with distance where they continued to pursue the fly-by-nights—suddenly men were embracing; but as much for physical support, to keep each other from falling, as in celebration of a victory!
And just when Garth felt his shoulders starting to slump a very little, as he was beginning to surrender to mental fatigue and physical weariness both, then out of nowhere—
—Someone sniggered?
But someone…or something?
For this sinister “sound” was by no means real or physical; Garth had experienced or “heard” such before and knew it hadn’t reached him through his ears only through his mind! And:
Ahhhh, ’prentissss! That sibilant voice “sounded” yet again in his head, audible to him alone. Lured you away, have they—know-it-all ‘pup’ that you are? But did you and all those other clan bastards think to get the best of Ned Singer? Well, who’ll get the best now, eh, ’prentissss? Ned, that’s who! Perhaps not the best of you—but the best of your old cripple of a father, aye—and for sure the best, and the juiciest, of Layla Morgan!
Garth reeled, staggered like a drunkard, as from the encampment in the forest the first hoarse shouts sounded, the terrified screaming, and the half-hearted (or so it sounded to Garth) sporadic crackle of gunfire. But of course it was sporadic—he told himself, as his legs unfroze, beginning to propel him back through the trampled shrubbery toward the dark blot of the forest’s fringe—because the majority of clan ammunition was all but used up! And:
“Layla!” Garth gasped, his heart, lungs and legs beginning to pound. “Layla! Father!”
Layla—yessss! sang that awful, hateful voice in his mind. And Zach yessss! Ha-ha-haaa!
Not knowing what was happening—only now beginning to react to the cries from the camp—the other clansmen at the road junction had been left behind as Garth, now totally galvanized, hurled himself through the night. He forced his body on, faster and faster, yet felt that he moved in slow-motion! It seemed to him that gravity had failed, as if he drifted through the darkness as insubstantial as a leaf, with each frantic leap lasting twice as long as the last one before bringing him down again on slippery creepers and humped roots!
And now from the encampment—staggering and almost falling, fleeing on rubbery, spastic legs from the wraith-like thing that wafted close behind, its elastic arms outstretched and reaching—came someone whose voice Garth knew at once despite its whimpering tone. “Help!” the scar-faced Arthur Robeson cried, thrusting his flapping arms out before him, and clutching at thin air in a manner that might seem in certain ways similar to the creature with burning eyes that came floating after him, but which was entirely different. “Somebody, anybody, please help me!… The fly-by-nights, coming down out of the trees!… They were hiding in the high canopy, and now…now they’re in the camp!… For God’s sake, can’t someone help me!?”
But too late! Robeson’s pursuer was upon him!
At the last moment the terrified man had half-turned, tripped, toppled over backwards as the monster leapt on him, straddled him, opened its jaws impossibly wide…then clamped down and covered his screams and entire face with them! There followed a terrible wrenching, a leathery tearing, before the vampire sat back, its scarlet mouth full of flesh and blood; at which a veritable fountain of blood erupted, hurled aloft on Robeson’s bubbling, gurgling shrieks!
Garth choked back his horror. But even desperately afraid—for himself certainly, but mainly for Layla and his father—he had not been so wildly panicked as to fling himself through the underbrush and the night without instinctively lighting the way ahead with the torch taped to the barrel of his rifle. And now, as his forward rush continued unabated, that weak beam of light showed him the final awful details as the horror seated astride Robeson’s jerking, vibrating body opened wide its bloodied jaws a second time, dipped its head and tore the man’s throat out!
At close to point-blank range Garth blew the fly-by-night’s head off. And as the frothing, pulpy spray collapsed he did the same for Arthur Robeson: which was as much “help” in this world as Robeson was ever going to get! For while it seemed improbable—or even impossible—that in his condition Robeson could ever return as one of the undead, still Garth had reason enough now not to take chances with whatever future, if any, might yet lie ahead.
And seconds later, as the howling of maddened dogs and the shouting, screaming and gunfire from the camp sounded that much louder and clearer—seconds that seemed to pass as slowly as minutes, while the resin-laden air became pungent with cordite stench, and the ground underfoot turned to leaf-mould and pine needles—Garth went in at a run, with his heart pounding and his eyes stinging from the smoky air—went in under the outermost fringes of the colossal, now nightmarish evergreens.
But he went too fast, too carelessly; half blind with his watering eyes, and unsure of where his feet were falling; his only certainty: that he must find Layla now, before something else found her.
Garth didn’t see the humped root that tripped and sent him flying, neither that nor the black bole of the great tree that brought an even greater darkness down on him…
XIII
While it might seem like forever to Garth, to the clan folk in the camp it had been mere minutes, no more than three or four, since the first of a dozen fly-by-nights had climbed down from the higher reaches of the canopy. Up there they’d been so completely concealed, hidden in foliage so deep and so dark, that even yesterday’s sunlight had been unable to discover them. Oh, Garry Maxwell’s “sniffers” and the rest of the clan’s dogs had sensed that something was very much amiss; but biding his time, a certain changeling had planned his ambush to perfection, and on high with his undead cabal had watched and patiently waited.
It meant nothing at all to him that many dozens of the vampires—in a worst-case scenario, the entire swarm, which some twenty-four hours ago he had sent over the river to the ancient mills—would die true deaths under fire from the clan’s defenders. What were such creatures after all but a diversion, a distraction, cannon-fodder to lure clansmen out from the camp that he had hoped they would make somewhere beneath the great trees. Ah, but as slyly devious and evilly intent as he was, even Ned Singer could scarcely have foreseen how marvellously well both his plan and his hopes had come to fruition…or how at least they seemed to be coming.
Ned’s only regret: that Garth Slattery was one of them who had gone to defend against attack from the bridge. But at least Ned could taunt Garth, and with his vampire-infected once-human mind he could do it even at a distance! That was something he’d not been able to resist—something he had done already, which may have been a mistake—or perhaps not. Maybe he had done it deliberately in order to draw Garth back within reach; but with his mind gradually devolving to an unavoidable undead and vacuous condition, Ned was having difficulty assessing even his own actions with any accuracy. Be that as it may, still he intended to taunt Garth again: just as soon as he held the girl Layla in his spidery but oh-so-strong fly-by-night arms, and enjoyed the heat of her sweet strong blood coursing through his desiccated, cobwebby veins!
Ah, yes: the cold pleasure he would derive
from laughing in the face of that horny Slattery pup—if the horde from across the river didn’t get him first, and if he should dare return to the camp and his beloved Layla—and how much more pleasure in killing and eating him! But not as much as he’d get from Layla, in all the endless years of having her body and her blood…
Ned would be the last of his kind down from the huge trees. He had sent the others, just one short of a dozen, ahead of him to kill or draw the fire of the men on the defensive perimeter. Some of those men had succumbed to death from above; others had heard or sensed furtive movement in the dense darkness overhead and reacted accordingly; three of Ned’s guerrillas had suffered the true death as a result.
Softly softly catchee monkey was a concept that Ned had instilled into pulpy vampire minds through a telepathic art which, paradoxically, they had taught him; but as for repressing their incessant, ravenous hunger…that was utterly beyond him! When fly-by-nights attacked it was for one reason only: to replenish themselves. Should any victim survive such a bloodletting, then he would shortly become a member of the next undead generation. However, by reason of Ned Singer’s untutored, patently susceptible mind, he and one other before him—the scav Jack Foster—had been the exceptions that proved a rule. They had been taken not only for their flesh and blood—though most of the latter had been drained off in order to facilitate the metamorphosis—but for something else that the monsters had sensed their willingness to supply: the knowledge that was locked in their human brains…while yet they remained human!
