by Jim Cogan
I think he struck me violently with the back of his hand – in truth, it was so fast that I didn’t see it coming at all. The impact of the blow was so severe it lifted me off my feet and sent me tumbling backwards a good five yards. My vision blurred, my head throbbed and I felt at least two teeth come loose in my mouth. I lay motionless for few seconds before dragging myself to my feet. My body was still aching from the beating McLane had given me earlier – taking a second severe beating inside twenty four hours was just completely unfair.
I threw a quick glance to my watch – one minute to go.
Vitalli was already advancing toward me, I was worried that he might let the moment go to his head and beat me to a bloody pulp right there and then. I was mightily relieved when Valance spoke up.
“Easy, Gianni. Remember, you must control those primal urges – you’re part of the superior species now.”
Reluctantly he held back.
“Johnny!” A very familiar voice reached my ears, I looked over and I saw Lydia, face bruised, clothes torn and battered, had been dragged in the clearing. Valance, eyes green, fangs bared, behind her – clasped her arm violently around Lydia’s throat.
I instinctively moved toward them.
“Stay there or I rip the bitch’s head clean off!” Lydia’s eyes widened in horror as she looked at me helplessly.
I flicked another glance at my watch – thirty seconds.
“Okay, Miss Valance, you win, congratulations,” I raised both hands in as diffusing a manner as I could muster, “now, please – I’ll take you up on your offer, I’ll work for you, hell, I’ll work for free – I’ll do anything you ask, just let her go.”
“Oh, you really are a prize idiot, Jerome!” She was cackling now like a demented witch, “none of you are walking out of here.”
“Yeah? I figured you might be full of shit, guess I was right. Well, c’mon then, you better make this quick,” I said, trying to summon up a last bit of bravado.
Ten seconds.
“Kill you? Don’t be so stupid! Three healthy humans – chock full of blood, that would be a horrendous waste. Oh no, Jerome, you’re all going to spend your last days in the farm with the other scum that we’ve dragged in. Think of it as probably the only truly useful thing you’ve ever done. How ironic it’ll be that as your life blood slowly drains away, you’ll be contributing to keeping my kind nourished.”
Times up.
“Is that right. Well...” I stalled, listening intently. Nothing.
“What’s the matter, Johnny?” she mocked, “not got one of your trademark wisecracks to throw at me?”
I hesitated, my mind pondering all the things that could have happened to scupper my plans. I thought for just a moment that this could really be the end for me...And then – that sound, that sweet, blessed sound. It was the unmistakable din of audio feedback.
“What the hell?” Vitalli glanced around, “That’s the city public address system. Why in the hell would anyone be broadcasting anything in the middle of the night?”
“That sure is, Gianni, my boy. I’m about to play you a little tune, and trust me, it’s going to literally blow your mind, you son of a bitch!”
It was my turn to give him the murderous stare. I wish I could have seen my own face at that moment, I’d wager I was grinning like a complete crazy bastard.
Quietly at first, a high pitched sound started to emanate all around, the city public address system had output speakers almost everywhere, including several within the complex – there would be no escape.
The vampire’s expressions all rapidly began to change from confidence, to indecision, to confusion – and then to blind terror.
The volume of the sound rose higher and almost simultaneously they all clasped their hands to their ears and began screaming and howling, falling to the floor and writhing. About ten seconds later the first vampire, one of the thronging mass all around me, exploded in a fiery and pulpy mess. He was followed by another, then another.
I looked at Lydia, she had gotten free from Valance – Del-Ray had clasped her arm and pulled her clear of the screaming horde.
Gianni Vitalli was on his knees in front of me, making the most tortured sound I’d ever heard a grown man make, blood and smoke poured out of him. I couldn’t resist it, I smacked him across his face the same way he had done to me just minutes earlier – admittedly nowhere near as hard, but it didn’t matter. His entire head split into two and fell clean off his shoulders and a geyser of flame and blood spurted from his neck about ten feet into the air. His torso fell forward and as it hit the ground his entire body disintegrated into a cloud of grey dust right before me.
Next, I began to make my way over to Valance, with every intention of giving her some similar treatment. Alas, she beat me to it. She hoisted back her head and let out an ear-splitting scream.
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-.”
And then she literally exploded in an impressive orange fireball.
“Whoa!”
The blast knocked me backward, I was temporarily plunged into a thick haze of acrid smelling, black smoke. After a few seconds the smoke began to clear, Shelly Valance was no more.
I looked around, all of the vampires appeared to have suffered a similar fate, reduced in seconds to nothing but smoke, piles of ash and splatters of powdered blood.
“Jeez!” I said out loud, “I sure wouldn’t want to be the one who’d have to clean this mess up!”
CHAPTER 11
We didn’t hang around long after. We quickly scouted the vicinity and found the destroyed remains of vampires everywhere. There were one or two hoods still about, but they were busy re-evaluating their choice of career - in light of their employers untimely demise. They weren’t really concerned about us.
Lydia was in a bad way, she was pretty traumatised and almost blacked out a couple times as we tried to make out way out of the Docklands complex. Del-Ray and I had to carry her the last few yards to the car.
Just as we drove away, the noise from the City public address system came to an abrupt halt. I had to admit, Smitts had done a fine job.
I was quite proud of the ruse I’d concocted. Smitts and Del-Ray had built a device that made a sound that could kill vampires, but it was small, only effective to a very localised degree. I figured the city public address system would be just about the best mass delivery system for carrying out large scale vampire genocide. Boy, was I proved right!
We’d agreed that Smitts would take the working prototype of the vampire killing audio device, sneak out of the institute in secret and head to the downtown broadcast station which controlled the signal fed out to the city public address system. I insisted he take a gun, not that I expected him to use it – hell, it wasn’t even loaded – although I didn’t tell him that, it was just as a precaution should there be a security guard on duty. As it turned out there was, thankfully some skinny runt of a guy who almost shit his pants when Smitts pointed the gun at him – he complied completely and pretty much let him do everything he needed to, and to make good his escape.
We’d synchronised our watches and agreed that at exactly five minutes past midnight, Smitts, having hooked up the device to the city public address system, would broadcast the signal for as long as he reasonably could before making his exit.
Mine and Del-Ray’s part in this carried infinitely more risk. The device we’d given to the vampires was fake, thankfully no-one inspected it that closely, it was nothing more than loose collections of wires, transistors and an old battery, all stuffed in a small, plastic casing. And they bought my story about me apparently murdering Smitts to explain his absence. But by far the biggest risk was that I had to bank on the vampires not slaying us the moment we arrived. Once in the complex I knew that the public address system had speakers dotted almost all over the site, providing Smitts did his part I was confident the plan would work. I guess in fact that I didn’t even have to go in there myself, I could have just broadcast the signal myself and
kept out of harm’s way, but I was sure the vampires would have had eyes on us – they’d have either stopped us or tipped off Valance that something was up – I couldn’t take the risk that she wouldn’t just kill Lydia there and then.
It was an educated guess that Valance and Vitalli would confront us out in the open, I figured their egos would dictate that they go for grandeur. It was fairly fortunate that they did, I had been slightly worried that they might have some soundproof bunker or something – where the public address system might not have been audible. If that had been the case we’d have been totally shafted.
We’d agreed to rendezvous with Smitts back at my office, and on the way there we found that the streets were crawling with cops and medics – I flicked on the radio and the local news was alive with multiple, alleged reports coming in from all over the city of people apparently spontaneously combusting at just after midnight. It appeared that we’d not only taken out the vampires at the docks, but quite a few who had been stationed throughout the city.
When we reached my office there were a bunch of uniformed cops keeping a small crowd at bay that had gathered just down the block. A couple of vampires had apparently been keeping tabs on my office, we caught a quick glimpse of some crime scene investigators sweeping up their remains into plastic sacks.
Smitts was already there, he’d taken the liberty of helping himself to a large glass of my bourbon, and I found the cheeky bastard slouching back in my chair with his God damned feet up on my desk. Under normal circumstances I’d have probably shot him for doing that, but I figured the guy had done good and would let him off… But only just this once.
I left an anonymous call with the cops to get their asses down to the docks with as many cops and ambulances as they could muster, then I called Richard Jameson to tell him that while I wasn’t sure if Anton was still alive, I at least knew where he’d been taken and that the cops would be in contact soon.
*
The news the following morning was full of the discovery at the docklands. Over two hundred people were rescued from the vampire blood farm, but the dead bodies of at least fifty others were also found. Neither the press nor the cops had a clue what the hell had been going on. There were rumours, let’s face it, I’d put the basics together myself and come up with vampires, but until I actually saw them – and they started trying to kill me, I hadn’t the gumption to mention it to anyone else. It sounded way too crazy. And I think that’s what the cops and the press thought too, it was a damn strange set of events, but no-one wanted to be labelled as the crazy one who dared suggest it was anything more than that. Santa Justina made the national news that day, and the incident entered into folklore such was its notoriety, and the city would forever more be a magnet for conspiracy theorists and paranormal enthusiasts. But we all made a pact to keep quiet about what actually happened. Hell, who in the world would have believed us anyway?
As it turned out, Anton was alive, but he’d been incredibly lucky – in a couple more hours in the farm and he’d have ended up down the shute like those other poor bastards we’d seen. Richard Jameson paid up in full, with a bit extra, so it was a double win for me.
Even Lydia forgave me, eventually, for getting her involved with this crazy mess. She had as much trouble truly believing what she had witnessed as I had, and I’m sure she carried some deep emotional scars long after her physical wounds had healed up, but being a real trooper, she put it behind her and moved on with her life.
Reana Del-Ray and I hooked up for a couple drinks and dinner dates afterwards, she really wasn’t anywhere near as much of a tight-ass when she wasn’t working, but alas, we certainly didn’t have much in the way of romantic chemistry. In fairness, that girl was just too damn smart for a humble caveman like me! But we remained good friends. About two months after, she called me to let me know that herself and Smitts were being reassigned. She refused to tell me where, so I suspected that it was either government or military. Our paths would one day cross again and I was to find out that there were a lot of things that she hadn’t been completely honest about, but that would be much later.
So that just left me. I took a couple of weeks leave, Jameson’s fee saw to that, and I rested up and tried to come to terms with the significance of everything I’d experienced. Eventually, I had to get back to work, and so I threw myself into it with the same old vigour, and nobody knew any different.
But I was different, inside. The nightmares persisted too. I found that the only way to avoid them was to drink a lot more in order to deepen my sleep. I didn’t become a fully fledged drunkard, but I’d have to admit that I became functionally alcohol dependent, the dreams would have driven me crazy otherwise.
The dirty city, having toyed with me for a few years, had finally taken its first proper bite out of me – and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last...
Note From The Author
Very many thanks for taking the time to read this, my debut book, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.
I’m currently working on a companion book to The Dirty City entitled ‘Tales From The Dirty’ - this will reveal some of the history behind Johnny Jerome, the origins and mythology of the vampires, the backgrounds to some of the key characters in The Dirty City, the backgrounds to some characters that will be key in future books in the series, and of course, the background to the city itself, Santa Justina.
The fully fledged second book in the series is also in progress, entitled ‘The Dirty City - Call Of The Undead.’
Both should be available in the Fall of 2014.
You can keep up to date with my work on my author platform website;
www.jimcoganauthor.com
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And again, very many thanks for reading my book :)
Jim Cogan
