Tale of the Dead Town

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Thanks a bunch.” There was the sound of branches shaking in a thicket some fifteen or twenty feet away, and then a fairly limber figure appeared. “So, you’ve got a trick that can knock a Noble’s underling out in one shot? When you’ve got a little time to kill, I’d love to see how you do that.” Punctuating his last comment with a burst of cackling laughter was none other than John M. Brasselli Pluto VIII.

  “Why are you out here?” D asked.

  “Aw, don’t get all tough with me, partner.” Pluto VIII smiled at the Hunter, his expression intimating they’d been friends for ages. “I knew he was bound to come back to life, so I was just waiting around for it. I tell you, that was a hell of a fight you gave that critter. I’m impressed. Very impressed!”

  “What are you after?” D asked softly.

  “Not a thing,” Pluto VIII replied, shaking his head in earnest. If he was tortured to the point where he could no longer speak, he could probably get by on that gesture alone.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just stay out of the way.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was hard to tell just what was going through Pluto VIII’s head, but for some reason he gave the Hunter a round of applause, then said, “By the way, were you by any chance planning on taking this creep back with you and making ’im spill his guts?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s pretty obvious, ain’t it? You aim to find out just who went and made this character like this. After all, he lost all that blood but doesn’t have a scratch on him. How weird is that?! You’ve gotta look into what’s causing this.”

  “You’re exactly right.” Easily carrying the fanged man on one shoulder and the unconscious woman on the other, D turned away.

  “Hey, hold on! Wait just a minute,” Pluto VIII cried out excitedly, scampering after the Hunter. “Let me carry the lady. I tell you, I can’t believe how tough it is trying to crack the gals in this here town. I can talk myself blue in the face, but they won’t give me the time of day. I should take this opportunity to make a reputation for myself.”

  While it wasn’t quite clear whether the Hunter was dumb-founded or not, as D stood there Pluto VIII basically pried the woman away from him and cradled her body in his arms. “Buddy, do you seriously think this character is just gonna tell you everything? I mean, after all, he’s a freaking vampire!”

  D said nothing.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I can get him to spill his guts for you. I’ll let you ask him whatever you want, just let me get some questions in, too.”

  D stopped in his tracks. As he slowly turned, Pluto VIII must’ve sensed something in the Hunter’s face, and, giving a cry of surprise, the biker leapt back a good ten feet. “Didn’t I tell you not to look at me all serious like that? Just thinking about that mug of yours gives me a powerful urge to jerk off, you know. At this rate, I’m liable to fall in love with you if you don’t watch it.”

  “Just what are you up to?”

  “Not a blessed thing.”

  “Should I talk to the mayor and have him toss you out of town?”

  “Won’t do you a bit of good,” Pluto VIII chortled. “I figured you might try something like that, so I found myself a new hideout. Besides, you can’t even find where the vampire’s holed up. You know, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you wound up with another one on your hands.” What Pluto VIII said was right on the mark. “So, what’ll it be? Stop looking so grim and make up your mind already.”

  “Okay,” D said softly with a nod.

  -

  Where Pluto VIII finally led D was to an abandoned boarding-house next to C Block in the industrial sector. “What do you think? Pretty great, huh? Got myself three rooms here. Can cook up my grub wherever I please. You’re looking at the lord of the manor,” Pluto VIII said pompously. “It don’t matter to me if you tell anyone else where to find me. Given five minutes, I can move myself into another hideout, you know. I’m a slipperier eel than any vampire.”

  “What are you really after?” asked D.

  “Who do you think you’re dealing with here?” Pluto VIII said, settling himself into a plastic chair. He invited D to do the same, but the Hunter wouldn’t sit down. The woman from the general store had been left lying next to a street that saw a lot of pedestrian traffic in a place where someone was sure to find her right away. Anyone summoned by a vampire’s power, as she had been, wouldn’t remember a single thing that had happened while under the vampire’s spell. Pluto VIII had set the unconscious vampire down on a large bed of rather simple tastes. Fingering the fiend’s extended canine teeth with morbid curiosity, he said, “Well, now. Let’s see if we can’t get him to answer two or three questions. Okay, now watch closely.”

  Saying that, he clambered onto the bed and over to where he’d put the vampire, then laid down on his back right next to the other man. D saw him squeeze down on the vampire’s hand. Pluto VIII closed his eyes. As he did so, all trace of expression vanished from his face. At the same time, the vampire began to tremble all over and his eyes opened wide.

  “Pretty slick, eh?” the vampire said in Pluto VIII’s voice. While the face was still clearly that of a farmhand, the expression had taken on an indefinable fullness, and through the eyes and mouth it bore a distinct likeness to Pluto VIII. This little stub of a man actually had the ability to possess other bodies. “Damn, it’s cold,” he groaned. “Inside this guy’s head and all through his body it’s just one great big winter wonderland. On the other hand, being in here I know everything he’s thinking. Now, according to him, he got turned into a vampire by . . . wow, by no one at all. All of a sudden he got cold and fell to the ground in front of that factory. And that’s about the size of it, it seems. Ain’t that the damnedest thing!”

  “Is the illness contagious?”

  To D’s question, Pluto VIII replied, “I don’t know. What I can tell you is he’s got a powerful thirst for blood. That’s it.” Suddenly Pluto VIII’s voice became muddled. Malevolence flooded into his normally amiable expression. His face now that of a demon, he leapt to his feet. The human who’d possessed this vampire had been overthrown with remarkable ease. Imitation vampire or not, the mental powers that condition endowed the victim with were certainly formidable. Slowly, the demon headed toward D—and then he suddenly grinned from ear to ear, just like Pluto VIII. “Sorry about that,” he laughed in the biker’s voice. “Didn’t mean to alarm you—not that you budged an inch. Well, I guess that’s D for you. So, that’s the only question you’ve got?”

  “No, I have another. What in the world were they researching in that house?”

  “Can’t say,” Pluto VIII replied indifferently. “He’s probably got the information, but everything related to it is in a fog. Guess that means no answer.”

  Nothing from D.

  “Looks like our plan has run awry.”

  D gave a slight nod.

  One of the paranormal phenomena that often linked the bloodsucker to its prey was a transference of memories. Often the memories of a vampire were copied into the brain of his or her victim. In most cases what was transferred was only a small portion of vampire’s recollections, but there were some victims who wound up with all of a Noble’s memories. By sending his consciousness into the other man’s body, Pluto VIII had hoped to access any memories that might’ve belonged to whoever made him.

  Not saying a word, D slung the undead body over his shoulder.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?!” the corpse—or rather, Pluto VIII—shouted.

  “If we’re through with him, I have to get him back in his grave. If you want to get out of him, better be quick about it.”

  “What a selfish little ingrate you are,” the man sneered, and then all stiffness left his body. At the same instant, Pluto VIII’s body got up from where it’d been lying on the bed. “I’ll have you know it takes a good deal of mental preparation to leap from one body to another. Oh, I think I’m gonna be sick—”

  D left the biker’
s room without making a sound.

  -

  As it moved forward, the town seemed to be glaring down at the brown plains. A group of shepherds and merchants looked up at it enviously and waved. Offering them nothing in return, the town continued its remorseless advance. But one had to wonder if it was actually making any progress. The town went on diligently, headed straight for the sun as it shone down with a strangely spiteful hue.

  -

  The next day, D called on the twenty or so men listed on the mayor’s sheet as being involved in boarding up the Knight family’s home. All of them gave him the same reply. No one had seen or heard anything strange while they were moving things out of the house. The mysteries of that abode remained shrouded in fog. As D was getting ready to call on the last person on the list, Sheriff Hutton, someone behind him called out his name. It was Dr. Tsurugi. Turning around, D asked, “How did it go?”

  “His condition remains unchanged. I wasn’t able to learn anything from the corpse.” He was referring to the man who’d risen from his grave the previous night. D had carried the body Pluto VIII had occupied to Dr. Tsurugi and had him subject it to a second medical examination. “It’s certainly my opinion this was caused by some sort of viral infection, but at the moment I can’t seem to put my finger on the culprit.”

  “There’ll be trouble if you can’t.” That was all D said.

  Realizing just what kind of trouble the Hunter was talking about, Dr. Tsurugi used the back of his hand to wipe away the sweat he’d just realized was pouring from him. Cold sweat.

  “I’ll see you later,” D said, turning his back.

  “Wait a minute,” the physician called out to him.

  “What is it?”

  The young physician shyly scratched at his head, which seemed to be a habit with him. “If you don’t mind, do you think you could pay a visit with me? To Lori Knight, I mean. She’s been acting a bit strangely.”

  “Strangely?”

  “Yes. Ever since she was attacked by this weird, shadowy character yesterday, her behavior’s been rather unusual.”

  “My going to see her wouldn’t change anything.”

  “Well, by not going you certainly won’t do her any good.”

  “Then you’ll have to wait until I’ve taken care of one bit of business,” D said, and began to walk away. Twisting and turning through a number of streets and back alleys, he arrived at the law enforcement bureau. Pushing his way through a cracked glass door patched together with strips of heavy tape, he made his way inside.

  Sitting behind his desk with his feet up while he joked with a couple of his deputies, the giant developed a sudden twitch in his face as soon as he caught sight of D. “What brings you here?” he asked. “You still got two days left. Don’t tell me you want off already?”

  “I have business with you,” D said plainly. “Could I speak to you in private?”

  Struck perhaps by the Hunter’s chilling aura, the two deputies quickly got to their feet, but the sheriff pushed them back down with hands the size of catcher’s mitts. “Wait just a cotton-picking minute, boys. This here’s the law enforcement bureau. We don’t take orders from no outsider. Least of all from a stinking Vampire Hunter. You’re not going anywhere. You’ll sit right here with me and hear what he’s got to say, you savvy? So, how’s that by you?” The last remark was aimed at D.

  D nodded. “Doesn’t matter to me. I just have one question for you. When you were boarding up the Knight house, did you see anything?”

  “What do you mean by ‘anything’?” The sheriff laughed, showing a lot of yellow teeth.

  “Were there any unusual items? Strange drugs, papers with formulas or equations? Special creatures? Anything like that.”

  The sheriff snorted loudly, “Of course there wasn’t a damn thing like that.”

  “Then I have another question for you. Why did the Knight family leave town?”

  “You might wanna ask the mayor that.”

  “Did the whole town drive them away, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Or were they glad to leave? Which was it?”

  “You come here looking to start trouble, buster?!” Sheriff Hutton snarled. The two deputies braced themselves for action. The sheriff started to rise from his oversized chair. His rear was only about an inch out of the chair when he stopped dead in his tracks. D was standing right in front of him. He was just standing there, an unearthly aura radiating from every inch of his body. That alone kept not only the sheriff but his two deputies as well from moving a muscle.

  “Answer me straight,” said D.

  “You—you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” the sheriff blustered, but his voice quivered nevertheless.

  “In that case, you leave me no choice.”

  Raising his left hand, D pressed it against the sheriff’s forehead. The same vacuous expression seen on a mental defective spread across the sheriff’s face. Eyes covered with a semitransparent film and drool coursing from the corner of his mouth, the lawman stared vacantly into space.

  “Why did the family leave town?”

  A reply wasn’t soon in coming. No doubt a battle was raging in the sheriff’s mind, a battle between his own ego and D’s words. The only question was how it all would end.

  “That family . . . was doing freaky experiments . . . Don’t know all the particulars . . . ” The words were clearly being torn from the sheriff. And it went without saying the power of D’s left hand was to blame.

  “You knew that, and still you did nothing?” the Hunter asked.

  “Wanted to . . . but then . . . mayor stopped me.”

  “The mayor?” D’s eyes shone. “Why would he do that?”

  “Don’t know . . . But I had official orders . . . Wasn’t supposed to do anything . . . about that family . . . ever . . . Seems the sheriff before me . . . had the same orders.”

  “How long had it been going on?”

  “From way back . . . Roughly two hundred years . . . ”

  According to what the mayor had said, that was right around the time the eerie stranger had come on board.

  “And their strange experiments had been going on all that time?”

  “I . . . I wouldn’t know . . . ”

  “Was the Knight family run out of town, or did they leave of their own accord?”

  “They . . . ran away . . . ”

  “Ran away?”

  “Night before they run off . . . mayor gave me orders . . . I went to their house . . . Knights were there . . . Arrested ’em on the spot . . . just like the mayor told me to . . . Threw ’em . . . in jail . . . Daughter was with them, of course . . . Mayor never did tell me . . . why we had to do that . . . Just said they’d committed a serious offense . . . against the whole town . . . and that was all.”

  “I see.”

  The “offense,” then, was experiments the Knight family had been conducting for generations. But what reason would the mayor—who’d always supported the Knights—have for ordering their arrest? And what could they have told the mayor?

  “How did Mr. and Mrs. Knight seem?”

  “I don’t know . . . They weren’t scared . . . at all . . . The two of them . . . looked to be giving some serious thought to something . . . What it was . . . I don’t know.”

  “How did they get away?”

  “The next day . . . I go for a look . . . and the cell wall . . . was melted away. Mr. Knight was a chemist . . . Figure he had something hidden on him . . . Acid or something . . . ”

  “I’ll be seeing you again.” D’s hand came away from the sheriff.

  It wasn’t until the hem of the Hunter’s black coat was well out the door that the sheriff and his two men collapsed into their chairs as if utterly exhausted.

  -

  Dr. Tsurugi was waiting for D. “I realize you must be busy, but I’d really like for you to come with me,” he said.

  D nodded. “I said I would. Let’s go.”

  The two of them set off f
or the hospital.

  “Quiet town,” said D.

  “I guess it is, at that. The sheriff and mayor probably have a pretty easy time keeping the peace. They don’t get strangers coming in and causing trouble. And the townsfolk are all well-behaved types who follow the rules. Every so often someone gets a little rough, but no one’s any rougher than the sheriff.”

  A smile formed on D’s lips. “Except for you,” he said.

  Dr. Tsurugi didn’t say anything, but he gave a great big grin. Quickly looking to D again, he asked, “How long will you be in town?”

  “If I was done, I could leave tomorrow.” And then, in a rare move for the Hunter, he asked in return, “How about you?”

  “Well, my contract is for a full year. But I suppose I’ll be getting off before then.”

  “Wouldn’t it cause problems if their doctor were to leave town?”

  “Nothing they couldn’t solve by finding another physician,” Dr. Tsurugi replied.

  “Are you bored?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I studied a bit of psychology. And from a psychological standpoint, you couldn’t find a more intriguing place. By their very nature, towns on the Frontier must exercise rather rigid controls in order to protect themselves from enemies without, but here they’ve taken it to the furthest extreme. Where do you think this town is headed?”

  D gave no reply.

  “Actually, they wander the earth far and wide with no goal at all.”

  “People down on the ground don’t have a goal, either. Humans, Nobility—all of creation is that way,” D said.

  “Yes, but in a village, people come in. In towns, people leave. Here, there’s neither. Do you have any idea how much time and energy the people of this town invest to come up with drugs that combat the problems caused by inbreeding? In my humble opinion, the only folks in town in their right mind were the Knights.”

  “Do you know anything about them?” the Hunter asked.