Tale of the Dead Town

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  More than the tragic details of what was essentially the utter ruin of that young woman, it was Pluto VIII’s righteous indignation that made the mayor and Dr. Tsurugi lower their eyes.

  D quietly replied, “I listened to what you had to say. Now get out.”

  -

  III

  -

  Once the clamorous Pluto VIII had been pulled away from the room by the mayor and four guards, D looked down at Laura’s face. Vacant as her gaze was, her eyes were still invested with a strange vitality, and they suddenly came into focus. The cohesive will she’d kept hidden tinged her eyes red. The will of a Noble. A breath howled out of her mouth. Like the corrupting winds gusting through the gates of Hell.

  “What did you come here for?” she asked. Her eyes practically dripped venom as they stabbed back at D’s. Laura’s lips warped. Something could be seen glistening between her lips and overly active tongue. Canine teeth. Once again Laura said, “What are you here for?”

  “Who defiled you?” asked D.

  “Defiled me?” The girl’s lips twisted into a grin. “To keep feeling the pleasure I’ve known, I wish I could be defiled night and day. What are you? I know you’re not just an ordinary traveler. We don’t get many folks around here who use words like defile.”

  “What time will he be here?”

  “Well, now . . . Suppose you ask him yourself?” Her pleased expression suddenly stiffened. All the evil and rapture was stripped away like a thin veneer, and for a brief moment an innocent expression befitting a slumbering girl of eighteen skimmed across her face. Then, once again her features became as expressionless as paraffin. Dawn had come at last to the Great Northern Plains.

  D raised his left hand and placed it on the young woman’s forehead. “Exactly who or what attacked you?”

  Consciousness returned to her cadaverous face. “I don’t . . . know. Eyes, two red eyes . . . getting closer . . . but it’s . . . ”

  “Is it someone from town?” asked D.

  “I don’t know . . . ”

  “When were you attacked?”

  “Three weeks ago . . . in the park . . . ” Laura answered slowly. “It was pitch black . . . Just those burning eyes . . . ”

  “When will he come next?”

  “Oh . . . tonight . . . tonight . . . ” Laura’s body snapped tight, like a giant steel spring had suddenly formed inside her. The blankets flew off her with the force of it. She let out what sounded like a death rattle, the tongue lolled out of her mouth, and then her body began to rise in the most fascinating way. This paranormal phenomenon often occurred when a victim’s dependency to the Nobility was pitted against some power bent on destroying that bond. Hunters frequently had an opportunity to observe this behavior, so D’s expression didn’t change a whit. But then, this young man’s expression probably wouldn’t show shock in a million years.

  “Looks like that’s all we’ll be getting,” said a hoarse voice that came from between the young woman’s brow and the hand that rested against it. “The girl doesn’t know anything aside from what she’s told us. Guess we’ll have to ask her little friend after all.”

  When the Hunter’s hand was removed, Laura crashed back down onto the bed. Waiting until light as blue as water speared in through the window, D left the room. The mayor was waiting for him outside.

  “Learned something in there, did you?” said Mayor Ming. He demonstrated the mentality of those who lived out on the Frontier by not asking the Hunter if he could save her or not.

  The fact of the matter was, when a vampire with a victim in the works learned that a Hunter had come for him or her, they’d make themselves scarce unless the victim was especially dear to them. After that, it was all just a matter of time. The future of that victim might vary depending on how many times he or she’d been bitten, and how much blood had been taken. There were some who could go on to live a normal life even after five fateful visits to their bedroom—though they usually became social outcasts. But there were also some young ladies whose skin turned to pale paraffin from a single cursed kiss, and they’d lie in bed forever waiting for their caller to come again, never aging another day. And then one day a victim’s gray-haired grandchildren and great-grandchildren would suddenly see her limbs shrivel like an old mummy’s and know that somewhere out in the wide world the accursed Noble had finally met his fate. The question was, just how long would that take? How many living dead were still out there, sustained by nothing but moonlight, hiding in the corner of some rotting, dusty ruin, their kith and kin all long since dead? Time wasn’t on the side of those who walked in the light of day.

  “Tonight, we’ll be having a visitor,” D told the mayor.

  “Oh, well that’s just—”

  “Is your daughter the only victim?”

  The mayor nodded. “So far. But as long as whoever did this is still out there, that number could swell until it includes every one of us.”

  “I’d like you to prepare something for me,” D said as he looked to the blue sky beyond the window.

  “Just name it. If it’s a room you need, we’ve already prepared your accommodations.”

  “No, I’d like a map of your town and data on all the residents,” said D. “Also, I need to know everywhere the town has gone since it started its journey, and what destinations are set for the future.”

  “Understood,” said the mayor.

  “Where will my quarters be?”

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  “No need to do that,” the Hunter replied.

  “It’s a single family house near the park. A bit old, perhaps, but it’s made of wood. It’s located . . .” After the mayor finished relating the directions, he pushed down on the grip of his cane with both hands and muttered, “It’d be nice if we could get this all settled tonight.”

  “Where was your daughter attacked?” D asked.

  “In a vacant house over by the park. Didn’t find anything there when we checked it out, though. It’s not far from the house we have for you, either.”

  D asked for the location, and the mayor gave it to him.

  Then D went outside. The wind had died down. Only its whistling remained. There must’ve been a device somewhere in town for projecting a shield over the entire structure. The town’s defenses against the harsh forces of nature were indeed perfect. Blue light made the Hunter stand out starkly as he went down the street. The shadow he cast on the ground was faint. That was a dhampir’s lot. There was no sign of the living in the residential sector. For the tranquil hours of night, people became like breathing corpses.

  Up ahead, the Hunter could see a tiny point of light. A bit of warmth beckoning to the dawn’s first light. A hospital. D walked past it without saying a word. He didn’t seem to be looking at the signs that marked each street. His pace was like the wind.

  After about twenty minutes he was out of the residential section, and he stopped just as the trees of the park came into view. To his right was a row of half-cylindrical buildings—one of them was his destination. That was where young Laura had been attacked. The mayor had told him all of the buildings were vacant. At first, that’d only been true for the building in question, but, after the incident involving Laura, the families living nearby had requested other quarters and moved out. Dilapidation was already creeping up on the structures.

  The house on the end was the only one shut tight by poles and locks. The fact that it’d been sealed with heavy poles instead of ordinary planks made it clear how panicked the people were. And there were five locks on the door—all electronic.

  D reached for the locks. The pendant at his breast gave off a blue light, and, at the mere touch of his pale fingertips, the locks dropped to his feet. His fingers closed on the poles, which had been fixed in a gigantic X. The poles of unmilled wood were over eight inches in diameter and had been riveted in place. D’s hand wouldn’t wrap even halfway around one. It didn’t look like there’d be any way for him to get a good grip on them. But
his fingertips sank into the bark. His left hand tore both poles free with one tug.

  Pushing his way past a door that’d lost its paint in the same crisscrossing shape, D headed inside. A stench pervaded the place. It was the kind of stink that called to mind colors—colors beyond counting. And each of them painted its own repulsive image. As if something ominous beyond telling was drifting through the dilapidated house.

  Though the windows were all boarded up, D casually advanced down the dark hallway, coming to the room where they’d found Laura. As the mayor had said, they’d performed an exhaustive search, and anything that wasn’t nailed down had been taken out of the room. There were no tables, chairs, or doors here. D’s unconcerned eyes moved ever so slightly as he stood in the center of the room.

  He stepped out into the hall without making a sound. At the end of another hall that ran perpendicular to the first he could see the door to the next room. A shadow tumbled through the doorway. It was like a stain of indeterminate shape. Its contours shifted like seaweed underwater, and the center of it eddied. Then it stood up. A pair of legs were visible. A head and torso were vaguely discernible. It was a human wrapped in some kind of protective membrane. What on earth was it doing here?

  D advanced slowly.

  The stain didn’t move. Its hands and feet changed shape from one moment to the next, yet their respective functions remained clear.

  “What are you?” D asked softly. Though his tone was quiet, it had a ring to it that made it clear his questions weren’t to be left unanswered, much less ignored. “What are you doing here? Answer me.”

  Swaying, the stain charged at him. It was a narrow hallway. D had no way of avoiding it. His right hand went for the longsword on his back—and dead ahead of him, his foe waved its arm. A black disk zipped toward D’s face.

  Narrowly ducking his head, D drew his longsword. Seeming to have some special insight into the situation, the Hunter didn’t use his unsheathed weapon to parry the disk, but slashed with the blade from ground to sky. His foe had already halted its charge, and now a terrific white light flashed through its crotch. From the bottom up, his foe was bisected. And yet, aside from a slight ripple that ran through its whole body, the shifting shadow was unchanged. An indescribable sound echoed behind it. Regardless, D advanced.

  Without making a sound, the shadow backed against the wall. It certainly seemed just like a real shadow, because its clearly three-dimensional form abruptly lost its depth and became perfectly flat before being completely and silently absorbed by the wall. D stood before the wall without saying a word. The gray surface of the tensile plastic was glowing faintly. That was the aftereffect of molecular intangibility—the ability to pass through walls without resistance. The process of altering cellular structure and passing through the molecules of some barrier caused subtle changes in radioactive isotopes. That same ability had probably allowed the shadow to evade the blow from D’s sword.

  Doing an about-face, D ran his eyes across either side of the hallway. The disk had vanished. There were no signs it’d hit anything, either.

  D pushed open the same door the shadow had come from. It appeared to be a laboratory that’d been sealed in faint darkness. The walls were covered with all sorts of medicines, and the lab table bolted to the floor was covered with burn marks and was heavily discolored by stains. He noticed signs that some sort of mechanical device had been removed.

  D came to a halt in the center of the room. There were shields over the windows. What kind of experiments had been performed here in the darkness, sealed away from the light? There was something extremely tragic about the place.

  This was where the intruder had come from. Had it been living in here? Or had it slipped in before D arrived, searching for something? Probably the latter. In which case, it would be relatively easy to discover who it was. Five hundred people lived in this town. Finding the intruder among that many people wouldn’t be impossible.

  D went outside. There was something in this house. But he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was. The sunlight gracing the world grew whiter. D came to a halt at the door. A black cloud was moving down the street. A mass of people. A mob. It almost looked like every person in town was there. The intense hostility and fear in their eyes made it plain they were fully aware of D’s true nature.

  D calmly made his way to the street. A black wall of a man suddenly loomed before him. He must’ve been about six foot eight and weighed around three hundred and thirty pounds. The giant had pectorals so wide and thick they looked like scales off a greater fire dragon. Leaving about three feet between them, D looked up at the man.

  “Hey—you’re a dhampir, ain’t you?” The giant’s deep voice was soaked with vermilion menace.

  D didn’t answer him.

  Something flowed across the man’s features like water. A frightened hue. He’d looked into D’s eyes. Ten seconds or so passed before he managed to squeeze out another word. “Seeing as how the mayor called you to his house, there ain’t much we can do about you. But this here’s a town for clean-living folk. We don’t want no Noble half-breed hanging around, okay?”

  The heads of those around him moved in unison. Nodding their agreement. There were men and women there, and even children.

  “There’s Nobility here. Or someone who serves them,” D said softly. “The next family attacked might be yours.”

  “If it comes to that, we’ll take care of it ourselves,” said the giant. “We don’t need no help from the Nobility’s side.”

  Nodding faintly, D took a step. That alone was enough to part the fearful crowd. The giant and the others moved back like the outgoing tide.

  “Wait just a damn minute!” Embarrassed perhaps to be afraid, the giant unleashed a tone that had a fierceness born of hysteria. “I’m gonna pound the shit out of you now, buster.”

  While he said this, the giant slipped on a pair of black leather gloves. The backs of them looked like plain leather, but the palms were covered with thin, flexible metal fibers. When the giant smacked his hands together, it set off clusters of purple sparks that stretched out like coral branches. People backed away speechless. Electromagnetic gloves like these were used by huntsmen. The highest setting on them was fifty thousand volts. Capable of killing a mid-sized fire dragon, they were lethal weapons to be sure.

  “What are you, scumbag—half human? Or is it a third?” the giant sneered. “Whatever the hell it is, you’re just lucky you’re sort of like us. Now say your prayers that the only part of you I burn to a crisp is your filthy Noble blood.” Purple sparks dyed his rampaging self-confidence a grotesque hue.

  D started to walk away, oblivious to the giant’s threats. The giant ran at him, right hand raised and ready for action. D’s movements and his expression were unchanged. Like shadows that’d never known the light.

  A sharp glint of light burned through the air. The giant shook his hand in pain. Sparks leapt wildly from his palm, and then a slim scalpel fell to the ground.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” The giant’s enraged outburst went past D and straight on down the street. Coming toward them with determined strides, his lab coat crisp and white, was none other than Dr. Tsurugi. “Oh, it’s you, Doc,” the big man said. “What the hell are you trying to do?” Though he tried his best to sound threatening, there was no doubt the giant had the recognizable threat of the physician’s scalpel-throwing to thank for the slight tremble in his voice.

  Coming to a stop in front of the crowd, Dr. Tsurugi said sharply, “Would you knock it off? This man is a guest of the mayor. Instead of trying to chase him off, you should be working with him to find the Nobility. Mr. Berg!” An elderly man, older than anyone else there, seemed shaken by the physician’s call. “You were right here—why didn’t you put a stop to this? If we lose our Hunter, it stands to reason the Nobility will remain at large. As you’ll recall, all our searches have ended in failure.”

  “I, er . . . yeah, I thought so, too. It’s just . .
. ” Berg stammered ashamedly. “Well, if he was a regular Hunter it’d be one thing. But him being a dhampir and all, I knew they wouldn’t go for it. You know, the women and children been scared stiff since they heard the rumors he was here.”

  “And they can get by with just a good scare—a Noble will do far worse to them, I assure you,” Dr. Tsurugi said grimly.

  “B . . . but, Doc,” a middle-aged woman cradling a baby stammered, “they say dhampirs do it, too. I hear when they’re thirsty, they drink the blood of people they’re working for . . . ”

  “Damned if that ain’t the truth,” the giant bellowed. “See, it ain’t like we got no grounds for complaining. The whole damn town may be on the move, but information still gets in. Y’all remember what happened in Peamond, right?”

  That was the name of a village where half the townsfolk had died of blood loss in a single night. Descending from the Nobility, dhampirs had a will of iron, but on occasion their spirit could succumb to the sweet siren call of blood. The man who’d been hired in Peamond found the black bonds of blood he’d tried so long to keep in check stirred anew by the beauty of the mayor’s daughter, and then the Hunter himself became one of those he hunted. Before the inhabitants of the village got together and held him down long enough to drive a stake through his heart, the toll of victims had reached twenty-four.

  “That’s the grandfather of all exceptions.” There was no vacillation whatsoever in Dr. Tsurugi’s tone. “I happen to have the latest statistics. The proportion of dhampirs who’ve caused that sort of tragedy while on the job is no more than one twenty- thousandth of a percent.”

  “And what proof do we have that this ain’t gonna be one of those cases?!” the giant shouted. “We sure as hell don’t wanna wind up that fucking one twenty-thousandth of a percent. Ain’t that right, folks?”