by Logan Jacobs
I nodded in agreement, and we found the hallway that would lead to this level’s cafeteria.
Both of us entered cautiously, me with my pikes held low and loose, Hann-Abel had his rivet gun in a two handed combat grip out in front of his face. The cafeteria had been decorated in the same strobe light alien gore motif as the rest of the level. Once again there were no vampires in sight which sent my Spidey-Sense tingling like one of those neck massagers from Sharper Image.
We moved as quietly as we could toward the double swinging doors that led into the kitchen.
“The dumb-waiter should be toward the back near the walk in freezer,” Hann-Abel whispered to me.
“You ever wonder why it’s called a dumb-waiter?” I asked just to take the edge off the tension. “I mean, like, why not smart-waiter? Right? It’s an elevator for food that saves time. Sounds pretty smart to me.”
“I am going to shoot you with this,” Hann-Abel hissed.
We pushed the doors open and entered the kitchen as slowly as we could manage.
Then came face to face with six vampires still feasting on today’s lunch special. Which was apparently raw cooks. We looked at them, and they looked at us for a long, drawn out moment.
The nearest vampire opened its bloody mouth and hissed at us. My Glima mod came online in the blink of an eye and without hesitation I hurled my right handed pike at it. It flew end over end and buried itself in the beast’s open mouth.
“Sweet!” I said and allowed myself a brief moment of elation. Then the vampire pulled the pike out of the back of its throat and threw it back at me. “Oh, shit!”
Had my reflexes not been honed to a razor edge from months of continuous combat the pike would have landed neatly in the middle of my chest but I was able to spin away and actually managed to catch it as it whizzed by where my heart had been just a second before.
As I spun around the vampires attacked. I heard the pfft-pfft-pfft of Hann-Abel’s rivet gun and saw two of the vampires flop on the ground with gaping holes in their heads. His aim wasn’t as good as my Ar’Gwyn guided shots would have been, and his next few bolts tore through the beast’s chests harmlessly. It barely slowed them down, and the next thing I knew Hann-Abel was beset by two of the creatures.
I rushed to his aid but ended up with two of my own vampires to deal with. They came at me with gnashing teeth and swiping claws. I was able to block one of the vampire’s over long arms with the point of my pike which sank into its forearm between the ulna and radius bones. It shrieked in pain and anger. The pike was lodged pretty well, and I dropped into a crouch and swung the pike as hard as I could to fling the vampire into his buddy. That dislodged my weapon from the vampire’s arm and the two of them flew into what I assumed was a vat full of hot fry oil.
Then the oil spilled and sprayed all over the creatures.
It melted skin from their bones which were as black as their skin. The vampires howled in agony but stayed standing with long strips of their flesh hanging from exposed bone like some kind of macabre fringe jacket.
I risked a quick glance back at Hann-Abel and saw that he had taken care of one of the vampires. It lay on the ground with neatly cut hole in its chest where its heart had been. Said heart was crushed in an ichorous smear underneath Hann-Abel’s shoe. He parried the blows from the other vampire with his leather cutting knife like a fencer. Each block cut a bit of flesh from the vampire’s body.
It got frustrated and took an ill timed swipe and with the flash of Hann-Abel’s blade four of its fingers dropped to the ground. It held the bloody stumps in front of its face incredulously. It didn’t get long to ponder its sudden lack of digits because Hann-Abel danced forward and swiped the thin blade across the beast’s throat. For a moment it seemed as if he’d missed his mark but then the vampire tried to move forward, and its head slid forward like melted ice cream off its neck and thunked on the ground.
“Whoa, gnarly,” I muttered and then had to turn my attention back to my own vampire situation.
They’d recovered somewhat from the oil and came at me with renewed vengeance. I slid one of my pikes into the loop on my belt and grabbed a large, heavy, iron frying pan from the counter and swung it back as hard as I could as the closest vampire came at me at full speed.
The pan clanged loudly as it connected like a Louisville Slugger with the fastball that was the vampire's head. I heard a loud crack as the vampire’s neck snapped, and its head lolled to the side at a sick angle. It stumbled around, disoriented, but didn’t die.
“Oh, motherfucker, you did not just survive that shit.”
I hurled the frying pan at the other vampire, and it smacked it right in the skull while I swung my left handed pike side arm and felt the satisfying thunk as the pointy spike sank into the jacked neck vampire’s head.
The other vampire had recovered enough and closed the distance in a flash, and I barely got my leather clad forearm up in time to catch the creature’s mouth as it sped toward my throat. Thankfully the thick leather protected my skin from getting punctured which would have made for a very interesting rest of the match as I turned into a Havampire.
The beast’s jaws were still incredibly powerful, and the pressure on the bones was almost unbearable. I pushed back with all my might and then suddenly a neat hole appeared in the vampire’s forehead, and the pressure released as it slid off me.
Hann-Abel stood above me with the rivet gun held in one hand like Trinity from the Matrix as she shot an Agent in the head.
“Thanks,” I huffed as I got to my feet.
“My pleasure,” he replied, and we made our way through the vampire corpses and pools of black blood toward the waist high hatch in the wall that was the dumb-waiter. We took positions on either side of it, and I reached down to grab the handle. Hann-Abel aimed his rivet gun where a theoretical vampire head would be, and I slammed the door upward.
Sure enough one of the shadow creatures tried to dart out but a solid steel rivet ended its day very quickly. Hann-Abel stuck the gun up into the shaft and pulled the trigger four times. We heard the sound of the steel bolts ping and clang as they ricocheted off the dumb-waiter walls but no other vampire’s showed their undead selves.
“After you,” I said and motioned for him to get in.
“Thanks,” he replied with a resigned grimace.
The dumb-waiter was fairly large, and I guess that Noor’Tun enjoyed rather big meals. The two of us climbed into the cramped cube and were soon practically nose to nose.
Hann-Abel reached out and hit the up button. There was a clank and an electronic whir, and then the dumb-waiter began to slowly rise. Very slowly. Very, very, slowly.
“If you try to kiss me, I’ll only let you get to second base,” I joked.
“If I could move my arm I would punch you right in the neck, Havak,” Hann-Abel grunted.
“Fair,” I grunted back.
“You would make a hell of a soldier if you could shut the fuck up for five minutes,” he sighed.
“Come on, you love me,” I replied.
“Well, we are still alive,” Hann-Abel snickered.
We rode in silence for the agonizing five minutes it took to get up to Level Three. Finally, the dumb-waiter came to a stop with an electronic DING. The door opened on its own, and Hann-Abel shoved the rivet gun through the opening as soon as the light began to show through.
The office that spread out before us was lavish to the point of ridiculousness. It was garish, gaudy, and tacky as all get out. There were stone pillars with busts of Noor’Tun lining the walls. A gold filigree carpet with intricate circular patterns of purple and green covered the polished hardwood floor. A huge dark wood desk took up most of the far end of the office and behind it was a floor to ceiling velvet painting of Noor’Tun, shirtless, with a body he clearly did not possess, standing on top of a massive mountain top holding a giant Rambo style machine gun with two topless, large breasted alien females wrapped around each leg.
Just behind the d
esk was a dark maroon high back executive chair with its backside to us.
Other than the god awful decorations the room appeared to be empty.
Hann-Abel and I got out of the dumb-waiter as quickly as we could manage and with weapons ready advanced on the executive chair. As we got closer I noticed the body of a vampire sprawled out on the gold carpet just behind the desk with a missing head. Black blood had pooled around the body and the base of the desk like a lake.
Just as we were almost to the edge of the desk the chair swiveled to face us. Hann-Abel brought the rivet gun up to bear at the same time as I readied myself to throw my pike but both of us held our fire once the chair turned completely.
Noor’Tun sat in the chair with a grim smile on his face. He held a smoking SunFlare pistol in his hand which he proceeded to aim right at us.
Bright red blood covered the front of his crisp military styled jacket and leaked from two puncture wounds at the base of his neck.
Looked like the vampire didn’t die before it left a parting gift.
“He he he,” Noor’Tun chuckled softly in a way that made me question the man’s sanity. “Of course it would be you two. Just my luck. If I could punch Tyche in the dick right now I would.”
“Get in line,” I said and tightened my grip on my pike axe.
“Well, at least I won’t die alone,” Noor’Tun said as he then burst into tears.
I took the opportunity to swipe across my body with an outstretched pike filled hand and knock the SunFlare from his weak grip. He looked at his empty hand and just wept more. “Don’t you understand? It’s too late. The sun will go down in the next thirty minutes and once night arrives it's all over. Game over, man. Game over.”
“Noor’Tun,” Hann-Abel said in a surprisingly calm, soothing voice. “You need to give us the code for liquidation and tell us how to open the sun shutters on Level One.”
“Fine,” Noor’Tun blubbered. “The code for liquidation is T H X one one three eight. But it won’t do you any good. Look.”
He pressed a button on his desk and a display screen appeared before our eyes. The images it displayed were indeed distressing. And by distressing I mean soul crushingly horrible in a ball shrinking way.
In the corner of the display white overlayed letters read LEVEL TWO. It was literally crawling with vampires. They were fucking everywhere. The floor looked like a goddamn ocean of them. They hung off the cieling like demented bats. I tried to count them all but gave up at one-fifty.
“At the far end of Level Two is a guard station,” Noor’Tun sobbed. “That’s where the only working liquidation command console is. Mine is broken.”
He held up his arm and where his wrist computer had been was a broken mess of wires with two puncture wounds in it.
“Great,” I muttered.
Noor’Tun pressed another button, and the display changed to Level One. It made Level Two look like a ghost town.
“The shutter controls are located near the elevator,” he said and pointed with one shaking finger. “Right by that big nest of vampires.”
“Figures,” Hann-Abel said almost to himself.
“Word,” I agreed.
At that point Noor’Tun stopped his blubbering and screamed at the top of his lungs. His skin began to crack releasing rivers of bright red blood. Under the blood I could make out black, leathery flesh as it began to shove its way forward. His whole body shook and convulsed as his bones audibly cracked and snapped, the sound like stepping on a pile of dry twigs. Saliva, thick and stringy, poured from his mouth like a faucet as his canine teeth popped out his head to be replaced by long, dagger-like fangs.
When he turned and looked at us with blood red eyes and shrieked, I’d had enough. I brought my pike down over my head and slammed it into the top of his skull. The shriek died in a wet gurgle.
“Sleep all day, party all night, never grow old…” I repeated the famous movie tagline. “It’s fun to be… a vampire… not!”
Chapter Fourteen
“Well, we better get our heads and asses wired together pronto, Havak,” Hann-Abel said like some kind of Marine drill instructor. “Let’s search the office, see if he’s got anything that might help us.”
“Copy that,” I said as I walked over and picked up the SunFlare pistol where it had landed in the corner of the room.
I checked the charge. SunFlare pistols emitted a continuous beam of ionized plasma that burned at roughly two thousand Kelvin. Which was fucking hot. Really hot. The sun at the center of Earth’s solar system burned at about fifty-seven hundred Kelvin. Thank you, Mr. Renfro’s tenth grade science class.
“SunFlare has three sustained bursts left in it,” I said.
Hann-Abel nodded in approval, and I stuffed the gun, safety firmly on, into my belt. Last thing I needed was to turn myself into a cauterized castrato. Hann-Abel started opening cabinets and pulling out desk drawers. There were lots of bottles of liquor, but little else.
I found a small entertainment system on one wall of the room and opened up.
“Wow,” I whistled. “Noor’Tun was an Earth-phile, apparently. One with a penchant for heavy metal, too.”
“Does Earth have some fascination with mercury and chromium?” Hann-Abel asked, highly confused.
“No,” I answered with a grin. “It’s a style of music characterized by heavily distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense base and drum lines, and vigorous vocals.”
“I have no idea what the hell you are talking about,” Hann-Abel said and stared at me for a second. “Can it help us?”
“Maybe?” I shrugged. I flipped on the console, and it lit up with volume, bass, treble, as well as high, low, and mid-range toggles. There was also a button that said “PA”. I assumed it meant that the music could be pumped through the prison’s speaker system. I started to peruse his collection as quickly as I could. He’d gone retro and had most of his collection on CD. There was Metallica, Judas Priest, Disturbed, Godsmack, Black Sabbath, and even a little Motley Crue and Poison. Just goes to show, not everyone is one-hundred percent dick.
On a whim I flipped the PA switch and hit play while I watched the display screen. The opening guitar riff of Seek & Destroy by Metallica began to blare from the speakers. It was muffled in the office but from what I could tell on the display screen it was headbangingly loud out in the prison.
The crunching riff upset the vampires, and they began to hold their oversized ears. I’d had a hunch that they were more bat-like than they looked and based on their shrieks used echolocation as much as scent and maybe more than sight to find their prey. I began to load a few song selections into the sound center and picked up a small remote for the whole thing. “Time to ride the lightning, vampire scum. This will either end spectacularly or be the best mosh pit in the entire galaxy.”
“What is that horrible noise?” Hann-Abel said as he pulled a Neutrino Scattergun from a hidden rack behind the big velvet painting. He racked the slide and actually smiled. “Eight rounds of explosive scatter shot with one full reload. Not ideal, but it helps.”
I checked the clock on the wall. We had spent a full five minutes ransacking the office.
“That horrible noise is awesome music that serves two purposes,” I started to explain, very pleased with myself. “One, it clearly fucks with the vampires perception. And two, possibly the more important aspect, we will have a killer soundtrack for our ticking clock badass, balls to the wall, run through the vampires montage.”
“You are a very strange person, Havak,” Hann-Abel said deadpan and then smiled. “But I like your style and flare for the dramatic. No matter how stupid it may be.”
“Thank you,” I said and then thought about it. “I think?”
“Come on,” Hann-Abel said as he adjusted the compressed air canister for his rivet gun. “We better get to it. There’s a stairwell up to Level Two at the back of this closet.”
“Man, it was a really good idea for you to get those blueprints,” I commented.
It had never even crossed my mind to try to do that.
“I know,” Hann-Abel grinned and stuck a short, navy blue cigar that he’d gotten from one of Noor’Tun’s desk drawers into the corner of his mouth. It gave him a roguish, Patton vibe, which somehow gave me a weird boost of confidence. I could see why he was a good leader.
We opened the secret section of the wall that opened into a very steep staircase. A minute later and we were at a large steel door that I assumed would open to a fucking vampire apocalypse. I held the SunFlare in my right hand and a pike in my left as I took a few steadying breaths. Once again the surge of adrenaline hit my bloodstream like the nails of a hungry lover, and I felt all my combat mods flare to life. They buzzed in my brain like a swarm of battle bots anticipating the chaos of war.
With a finger, I pressed the play button on the remote control. The deep dirge of Soundgarden’s Beyond the Wheel began to blare.
“Let’s rock-and-roll,” I said with the grin of a madman on my face as Hann-Abel slid open the door, and we ran out into hell on Earth.
The vampires were completely disoriented by Chris Cornell’s blazing vocal, and we’d actually made a good thirty feet on our hundred yard dash to the guard station at the far end of the Level before they noticed us.
“Havak!” Hann-Abel yelled as he brought the scattergun to his shoulder. “Take point. Hit them with a blast from the SunFlare, it will clear us a path. I’ll cover our six.”
In response I raised the SunFlare and let loose with a long, sustained blast. The gun had an invisible heat shield to protect the shooter from the intense heat. The vampires in our path had no such protection.
The SunFlare’s beam of ionized plasma flared bright orange and had tendrils, like flares on the surface of the sun, that leapt off the main blast. I waved it in front of me like a garden hose on a blistering summer day for the full two second blast.
