A horrible choking sensation assailed Chad. He reached up to claw at his own throat, but before his hand got there his heart had stopped.
-
While it was indeed a hill, with a height of only about fifteen feet, it hardly had a commanding view. And yet, for one of the two it was surely more than adequate. After all, Lori wasn’t alone, and by her side was a man the darkness suited more than anyone. Despite the moonlight, the plains they overlooked were as dark as anything imaginable, but the sky to the east was already laced with the first thin light of dawn. The wind pricked at Lori’s cheeks. It was as cold and sharp as an awl. Lori gazed at D while D watched the eastern sky. Did those trapped in darkness hope for the light of dawn, too?
So, what had they come up here to do? D bent down by Lori’s side and put one of the fingers of his left hand to the ground. Lori read the words he wrote in the sand. I hear voices, D had written. What voices was he talking about? The message seemed almost cruel.
Lori turned up the collar of her coat. The wind tossed her soft hair as it passed. So cold, she thought. Maybe people weren’t meant to live out in the wild. After all, it was this cold even at daybreak.
The town was still moving. But going where? It had no destination. Where was it heading? Not even Lori had any idea what D was thinking about. While it was true she’d been raised in town, she’d also experienced life out in the wilderness. The wilds were just too terrible. The fear inspired by the monstrosities and vicious beasts the Nobility had loosed was still enough that the world would quake at dusk today.
Lori had wanted to go back to the town with all her heart. However, the paradise she’d wanted now seemed so hollow. Lori no longer had words or sounds, which was exactly why she could feel things so much more intensely . . . She thought of working reasonable hours, and having reasonable accommodations, food, and clothing, of having a life that was satisfactory, but not satisfying at the same time. The overwhelming sense of loss from the people after they’d made it through the magnetic storm only served to highlight her feelings. If she hadn’t experienced life in the wilder-ness, she probably would’ve been just like the rest. Although she was far from conceited, Lori knew there was something wrong with the town as it was now. But, in her silent world of despair, did she have reason to be proud of being different from the rest? An inescapable sense of loneliness filled her little heart. While she had the feeling the world she was meant to live in was just around the next bend, for Lori that was a far-distant land. If I get off this town, what’ll happen then? she wondered.
To the east, the edges of the mountains had begun to glitter with a rosy hue. Light slipped down the mountainside, becoming a torrent that flooded the plains, and in no time Lori’s entire field of view was tinged in gold. She closed her eyes. Even with them closed, she could see. She saw the color of wind. And how the wind shined in its own way.
After a while, D opened his mouth. Lori tried to read his lips. She didn’t catch it all. A bit more slowly, D repeated it. Finally she understood him.
Next time, come alone. That’s what he was saying.
-
It was a little past six o’clock Morning when D called on the mayor. He found the mayor sleeping in his chair in his office. As a cold pain tightened his chest, the mayor jumped up and saw the Hunter standing by the door. Putting his hand to his throat and breathing a sigh, he asked, “How long have you been there?!”
D said nothing.
“So, it seems I have you to thank for scaring the daylights out of me . . . Just having a dhampir around seems to be enough to give folks nightmares.”
“I’m here because I need to ask you something.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right . . . You were by a little earlier, weren’t you? You’ll have to excuse me. I was out at the time.”
“It seems you had the Knights detained.”
The Hunter’s softly spoken words made Mayor Ming’s eyes bulge. “Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why did you stop them? Why’d you have them thrown in jail?”
“Do I have to answer that? The only thing you’re here to do is to kill our vampire.”
“And what if someone manufactured that vampire?” D asked.
“What?!”
“What did the man who boarded your town two centuries ago have to say to you?”
The mayor greeted the question with silence.
“What did it involve?”
More silence. Beads of sweat appeared on the mayor’s brow. “Just what I told you before,” the mayor finally said.
His voice lacked strength of will, and D shattered it with his own soft tone. “What did the man who visited here two hundred years ago tell you? I can imagine what it was, but I won’t mention it. However, it was the Knights who accomplished what your visitor hoped to do. But only after long years had passed. That’s what you wanted. What did you want it for? Why did you have a falling-out with the Knights?”
Nothing from the mayor.
“After two centuries, vampires suddenly start showing up here, and yet we can’t find the cause for it. There’s no one here sucking people’s blood and turning people into vampires. There’s only one answer—they were manufactured. Made that way by somebody’s special process.” D’s eyes looked like they could suck the soul from the mayor. “Made with the technique he gave to you, and you taught to the Knights. What was in their house?”
Bracing both hands on the head of his cane, the mayor hung his head. “Peace must be maintained in town for all time.” A voice closer to a groan flowed from beneath the mayor’s bowed head. “The conditions now are ideal. But we’re still hounded by destruction and the creatures of nightmare. The mayor has a duty to protect the townsfolk.”
“Peace and ideals,” D muttered. Coming from his lips, the words lost all meaning and became mere sounds.
“This town is what the Frontier would be ideally.” Saying this, the mayor lifted his face. It was warped. His lustrous skin had surely been artificially augmented. The ugly wrinkles that crept across his cheeks looked like furrows in a freshly plowed field. “To live serenely out in the untamed forces of nature without fear of the Nobility or their despicable ilk—that was the human ideal. When I formed this town and peopled it with a select few, I believed I’d gotten closer to that goal than anyone. But many threats still remained. It was still far from perfect . . . ”
The mayor’s finger pressed the top of his desk. Suddenly, D was in the middle of town. It was the residential section immediately after the magnetic storm. The images must’ve been shot with a holographic camera. The plastic roofs of many houses were melted, and the electrical discharge towers gave off pale smoke and spat sparks in their death throes. People with burns either hobbled along on their own or were held up by family as they tottered slowly down the street, most likely headed to the hospital. A little girl passed right through D’s waist and disappeared into a back room. A fire engine ran over a sofa, then plowed through someone’s front door. Fires were springing up everywhere. A middle-aged man grabbed an electrified handrail, lurching backward as purple light shot from him. It was a ghastly tableau.
“This is the town at its limits. A mere magnetic field can’t even begin to compare to the other monstrosities the Nobility loosed on the world. Yet, if running into it wreaked this kind of havoc, then what the town considers ideal is still far shy of what I have in mind.”
“And making those ideals a reality involves making sacrifices and taking certain steps, doesn’t it?” the Hunter said. “Certain bloody steps, I’d say. What exactly did you ask the Knights to do?”
The mayor swallowed loudly. He didn’t suppose D was going to leave now, and he wasn’t the kind to be taken in by a lie. As Ming was about to slowly take a step, his foot froze in place. An unearthly aura was filling the room. So this is what a dhampir can do? he thought. This is the man called D? So terrified it wouldn’t have been strange if his heart had stopped, too scared to even shake, the mayor gazed a
t the Hunter’s gorgeous countenance.
“Answer me. What did you ask the Knights to do? What did they discover?”
“It was . . . ” the mayor panted. An incredibly powerful essence threatened to crush his psyche. “It was . . . ”
At that very moment, the intercom on the mayor’s desk flashed red. With the series of short, tension-filled buzzes, D’s unearthly aura dissipated almost immediately. Wiping at his greasy sweat, the mayor grabbed the intercom microphone. “What is it?”
“This is the navigational control room. We’ve got a lone flying object approaching from north-northwest at a range of forty miles. Speed is sixty miles per hour. The object is—roughly the same size as our town. We’re trying to hail it, but haven’t gotten an answer.”
“I see. I’ll be right there. Don’t forget to prepare for a counterstrike, just in case.” When he switched off the intercom, the mayor had a relieved look on his face. He felt more at ease having some unknown intruder threatening the town than he did sitting in the same room with the young Hunter. “Guess I’ll be going, then,” the mayor said without looking in D’s direction. Just then the intercom buzzed loudly again. “What now?”
“The flying object has launched missiles. Three in all. They’re approaching now—twenty seconds to impact.”
“Get the barrier up!”
“It was damaged by the magnetic field—repairs are still under way.”
“Begin firing antiballistic missiles and antiaircraft guns!” When the mayor raised his now pale face once again, he saw no trace of D.
-
The Grim Reaper was winging his way toward the town. A trio of long, thin reapers, actually, with sensors in their tips and flames gushing from the nozzles to their rear. Taking into account their own speed and that of the town, they were constantly adjusting their course to the target as they closed in on it at full speed.
-
At the sight of the Hunter in black who’d appeared without a sound, everyone in the energy output control room forgot their approaching death and stood in a daze.
“Where’s the barrier projector?” D asked softly. Even knowing that death was drawing ever nearer, he still managed to maintain his detached tone of voice.
The eyes of all the workers focused on one corner in the back. D headed over to the silver cylinder. He was like a sprinting shadow. Saying not a word, the workers stepped to either side. In the gap they left was a gaping hole where a riot of pale blue electromagnetic waves danced chaotically. There was only one man who didn’t leave his post. Welding gear in hand, his body unexpectedly flew backward into the room. Fire rose from the protective plates on his chest. He’d just taken a blast of electromagnetism. Silently, D stood between the man and the rough hole. His handsome face shone blue and cold.
“Don’t bother. Can’t turn off the electromagnetic wave output,” the man shouted as he used his hand to beat out the flames on his chest. “There’s a hundred thousand volts running through there. Without a protector on, we’re talking instant death.”
“Get in touch with the control room,” D ordered the frozen workers. “When you need the barrier, I’ll send the current through.”
Asking no questions, and offering no arguments, the men nodded. One, who appeared to be in charge, brought his mouth over to the microphone on his shoulder, and had them patch him through to the navigational control room.
A slight tremor passed through the ship’s hull. The anti-aircraft fire had started. While the town was equipped with antigravity generators and an electronic barrier, their armaments were incredibly primitive. Aside from the Prometheus cannon—which, in a cruel trick of fate, had been stripped down for inspection an hour earlier—they had only twenty high-angle machine cannons with a two-inch bore and thirty antiballistic missile launchers. Of course, they couldn’t be expected to produce their own shells and missiles, so those were procured from flying merchants who specialized in dealing with floating cities like theirs. Even so, such merchants were few and far between, meeting the town only three times a year. If they ran out of goods they couldn’t produce in the interim, a floating city had no choice but to find them on their own. Many of the battles between two floating cities had resulted from this mutual need. But the hostile actions of the unidentified flying object firing upon them were nothing short of indiscriminate slaughter.
Prismatic flames spread across the sky, and black smoke enveloped the area. To increase their destructive power, the shells for the machine cannons contained depleted uranium and were armed with proximity fuses. Even if they failed to score a direct hit, they would automatically detonate if their sensors detected a target within their destructive range. Each time the big guns fired, the whole town rocked wildly.
The incoming missiles displayed the most astounding behavior. Like sentient beings, they dodged shells and adjusted their speed as they rushed steadily closer. They seemed to be mocking the town.
Minute course adjustments were nearly impossible for the town’s antiballistic missiles. Every one that’d been launched left an ineffectual trail of white through the empty sky as it disappeared.
A small, black shadow of death clung to the town. People looked out their windows at the three points of approaching light. On every face was a despondent expression. The thought of the fate those missiles held for them robbed them of their willpower. Long spared the threats of the world below, the fragility of their peace had been made evident by their enemy’s attack.
-
Missiles closing—three seconds to impact!” came the bloodcurdling news from the microphone on the man’s shoulder. All eyes were on D. The Hunter reached into the hole in the wall, and, grabbing a fistful of cables, he pulled down. From his shoulder to his wrist, pale blue electromagnetic waves clung to him like a spider’s web, and white smoke rose from his body. His face didn’t show the slightest hint of pain. His right hand went into action, pulling out the ends of the severed cords. Electromagnetic waves covered D entirely . . . Perhaps it was the first time this young man had worn a color other than black. Using his body as a conductor, energy suddenly shot from the reactor to the barrier projector.
Richly colored blossoms opened near the town. Flames that could get as hot as fifty million degrees and a lethal dose of electromagnetic waves and radiation churned through the atmosphere, threatening to destroy the electronic wall that’d suddenly appeared.
The people saw the electromagnetic waves running from D’s right hand to his left in reverse direction. D’s eyes narrowed. The flow changed back again. The barrier didn’t fade until the trio of blasts dissipated in the air.
-
II
-
Even after D had backed away, no cheer went up in the control room. What they’d just witnessed was so incredible it left them absolutely stunned with amazement. Their amazement, along with their overwhelming sense of relief, was enough to throw them into a state of dementia. The man before them—their savior—clearly couldn’t be human. That’s why he was so good-looking.
Lightly tossing his head, D shook off the white smoke still rising from his body.
“The flying object is closing,” a somewhat listless voice announced through the microphone. The main craft still remained.
Braced, perhaps, for the next attack, D didn’t move.
“It’s closing on us—just a thousand yards off, nine hundred, seven hundred, six hundred . . . ”
“It’s gonna hit us . . . ” someone muttered.
“We can’t change our heading.”
“We’ve had it now . . . ”
A black wind fluttered by the men.
D exited the control room. Racing up the stairs, he charged across the street. The center of town was completely empty. With sunlight falling in a bright shower, the town was a picture of tranquility. A voice he knew cried out, and D looked over his shoulder. Lori and Dr. Tsurugi were dashing toward him. D didn’t stop for them, but kept on running. Something became visible beyond the town’s
defensive walls. The form of their foe was clear now.
It seemed that floating cities of various kinds followed the same basic structure, and the shape flying toward them at high speed bore a strong resemblance to their own town. In fact, it was almost identical. The familiar rows of dwellings, the navigational control tower, and three-dimensional radar arrays all stood out in the sunlight. Perhaps the only point where the two towns differed was that all of the structures on the other town were reinforced with menacing armor plating. One look at the new town and its aim was apparent. The vessel was built to plunder.
Posing as an ordinary city, they might close in on their victims under a pretext of trade, then use their cannons to rob their prey of their defenses before sending armed troops to board. In other words, they were pirates of the sky. But, strangely enough, not only wasn’t there a single person to be seen on the streets or in any of the ship’s portholes, but no one was visible through the control room’s window, either.
“That’s odd—if this ship’s here to loot us, they should be softening us up with their guns now,” D heard the winded Dr. Tsurugi say from behind him. “But they’re pulling alongside us instead. We’ll have to fight them.”
“What about the sheriff?” D asked, eying the pirate ship slowly circling them.
“He’ll be here soon, I’m sure,” the physician replied. “The real question is whether he’ll be of any use or not.”
“Why’s that?”
“As you may already know, due to their overprotected state, people around here are incredibly susceptible to shock. The towns-folk here have had peace for too long. Fights and other disputes have always been the sort of things they could settle among themselves in their little town. Forget the fact they wouldn’t know how to begin to deal with attackers from outside—the whole incident with the lightning has left the lot of them in a stupor.”
“Then it’s up to just the three of us.”
A perplexed expression wafted over Dr. Tsurugi’s face. “The three of us?” he muttered, paling instantly. “I can’t believe you! You intend to have Lori fight? Why, she’s just—”
Tale of the Dead Town Page 12
