Midnight Hat Trick

by Vernon, Steve

  "It looks like the Partridge Family bus after it got gangbanged by the Munsters's hearse and the Adams Family roadster in a middle of a nuclear paint storm," Fergus observed.

  "I'm not done yet," Sprague said, unzipping his fly.

  He leaned back, thought of England, and pissed squarely on the bus. The piss didn't ruin the paint nearly as badly as the garlic had but it stank a whole lot worse.

  "Come on, damn it," Sprague ordered Fergus. "Don't leave me hanging alone out here in the breeze."

  Fergus made up his mind.

  He undid his fly, grinning like a ten-year-old boy playing Show-and-don't-you-goddamn-tell.

  Then he joined in, pissing on the bus, spraying it from one end to the other, carrying on long after Sprague ran dry.

  "Christ almighty," Sprague said. "You ought to get yourself a job on the fire department."

  "Everybody's got their own special talent," Fergus said, with a grin. "So what do you think this'll do?"

  "Do?" Sprague said.

  He turned and walked away from the bus.

  Fergus followed, close behind.

  "It'll do plenty," Sprague said.

  "Plenty like what?" Fergus asked.

  "Once you've been pissed on, you bet your ass you're going to be pissed off."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning they're going to come for us tonight," Sprague said. "They'll be pissed and not thinking straight and we'll take them but good."

  "I thought we weren't going to wait until dark," Fergus said.

  "Now who in the hell asked you?" Sprague said, opening his front door.

  "So what will we do?" Fergus asked.

  Sprague turned to look back at the bus.

  "Unless all of you Red Cross mosquito-brained leeches need to sit down to pee, you better get it up fast and meet us out tonight on the rink. You and we are going to play us some goddamned old fashioned Mari-fucking-time hockey!"

  He stepped into his house with Fergus and slammed the door behind, leaving the bus out there in the street.

  "I thought we weren't going to wait?" Fergus said. "What happened to our plan?"

  "I haven't stuck to a plan in my entire life," Sprague said. "I don't see why I need to start sticking at this point in the game."

  He looked back at the bus.

  "They'll come, and they'll be pissed when they come, and that's exactly when we three old farts are going to fuck the sweet living hell out of a pack of vampires."

  "Three?" Fergus said. "Are you that sure that Leo is going to show up?"

  "Aren't you?" Sprague asked. "Where in the hell would the good and bad be without the ugly showing up?"

  Saturday night, 7pm

  Sprague dragged a garbage bucket full of broken wooden hockey sticks out onto the ice next to the net. The trash can scuffed the ice and that bothered him a little, but not nearly as much as the spatters of blood that still lay on the ice where young Tommy had been strung up. Still, blood and all, he was feeling pretty good – humming the old Hockey Night in Canada theme song to himself.

  "Where the hell is Leo?" Fergus asked for about the thirty-second time.

  "He'll be here," Sprague said.

  "How can you be so certain?" Fergus asked.

  "And how can you be such a doubting goddamn Thomas?" a voice sang out from behind them.

  Fergus turned.

  Sprague just nodded.

  There was Leo, standing there, dressed in a suit that looked like he'd rescued it from the Salvation Army dumpster, with a case of fancy glass-bottled water under his arm. He was dressed all in black, with a homemade priest's collar that looked as if it had been cut from recycled cardboard. He wore three crucifixes, one Star of David, a St. Christopher's medal, an Egyptian ankh, and a hood ornament that he'd scavenged from a broken-down Volvo.

  "Look at the gee-gaw on that," Fergus said. "Did the church hold a garage sale?"

  "There isn't any church left," Leo said. "In case you didn't remember."

  "Well it's a little late for Halloween, isn't it Leo?" Sprague asked.

  "That's Reverend Leo, to you, Sprague."

  "Come again?" Fergus asked.

  "That's Reverend Leo to the both of you," Leo said. "While you two were sitting here eating Sprague's pan-fried bologna I spent the whole day on the internet. It took me that long and nearly most of my savings account to get myself ordained as an honorary minister in the Alpha-Centauri New Mexican Born-Again All Saints Church of the Apostle UFO-ology Ziggurats."

  Sprague snorted.

  "Do you mean you went to all that trouble just to try and prove to us that your goddamn internet is actually useful for more things than just cruising porn sites and playing Texas Hold'em?"

  "That's Reverend Goddamn Internet to you, Sprague," Fergus added.

  "I figured it couldn't hurt," the newly ordained Reverend Leo pointed out.

  "Might work at that," Sprague conceded. "What's the water for?"

  "We've got rum, if you're thirsty," Fergus said. "Or is drinking against your religion?"

  "Leo on the wagon sounds great to me," Sprague said enthusiastically. "That leaves all the more rum for us."

  "This water isn't for drinking," Reverend Leo said. "It's a weapon."

  "Come again?" Fergus asked.

  Reverend Leo set the case of water down and knelt beside it and began to pray.

  "Hail Mary, full of grace, in the name of the Alpha-Centauri New Mexican Born-Again All Saints Church of the Apostle UFO-ology Ziggurats I bless this water."

  Sprague stared. Fergus stared.

  Leo just grinned.

  "Ha!" Sprague laughed, slapping his knee. "We got ourselves some goddamn holy water. Hail Mary and pass the UFOs."

  "All we had up until now was our broken hockey sticks," Fergus said. "We've rubbed garlic on the sharp end."

  "Are you sure they're going to work?" Reverend Leo asked, bending to pick up two of the hockey spears. He pulled a roll of hockey tape from his pocket and quickly made himself a hockey spear crucifix.

  "It says wooden stakes work in all the movies I ever seen," Fergus said. "I don't know what else a broken hockey stick is, if not a wooden stake."

  "I keep wondering what will happen if these teethy boogers haven't seen any of those movies either," Sprague said.

  "Do you want to live forever?" Fergus asked with a shrug.

  "I'd rather not find out," Sprague answered pointedly. "But if any of them bite us we just might get some sort of an idea."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Fergus asked.

  "Do you think these vampires are contagious?" Leo asked.

  Sprague shrugged.

  "How the hell should I know?" he said. "Why don't you go and look it up on your Google machine?"

  Fergus and Leo grew silent for a moment.

  "Well," Leo finally said. "If everything else fails I've taken the precaution of memorising a couple of jim-dandy burial services."

  "Good to know," Sprague said. "Because we've got company."

  While they had been talking the bus had silently pulled up to the rink.

  "Now we're fucked," Fergus said.

  "A-fucking-men," Reverend Leo agreed.

  "No way," Sprague said. "Now we get to play us some old-time hockey."

  Saturday night, 8pm

  Hockey Night in Hell.

  "Come on you bucktoothed he-devils," Fergus called out. "Give us your worst and be goddamn done with you!"

  "Your Newfaneese is showing," Leo warned as he unscrewed two bottles of UFO holy water. "If that accent gets any thicker I'm going to need subtitles."

  Sprague squeezed the shaft of the broken hockey stick. His mouth felt dry and he was worried a little. He took that worry as a good sign. To worry before a fight was a hell of a lot better than worrying in the middle of one.

  "Just bring it straight to me, you sheep-fucking blood-whores," Sprague said bluntly, gesturing with the hockey stick. "I'm ready for a little shishkabob shinny."

  This
was how it was before any fight on the ice. Back in the day, when the three men had played together they could be grinning and happy at one moment, and then cursing up a storm at the next.

  And then the gloves would come off.

  Sprague skated back and forth in front of the net, tapping his hockey stick spear nervously on the ice. Then he worried that he might scrape the garlic juice off so he forced himself to stop tapping.

  "Come on, damn it."

  The vampires didn't seem all that comfortable on the ice. The first one stepped out carefully, losing some of that wooden soldier rhythm that they had demonstrated the night before in Sprague's back yard.

  "Maybe we ought to get you boys some figure skates," Fergus called out.

  "You fall down on this ice and you're apt to give yourself one major league root canal."

  The vampire snarled at them.

  "That one in the front is either the lead dog or the runt of the litter," Fergus said.

  "I'm thinking he's small fry," Sprague said. "Leaders usually hang back and let the young scrod sort it out amongst themselves."

  "That explains why you're standing so close back to the net," Leo said with a grin.

  "We get done with this lot," Sprague promised. "And you and me can have ourselves a good long talk, Reverend Leo. Might be I'll baptise you with a rock two or three times."

  He spat smack dab onto the ice, banged the spit hard twice with the point of his stick and then leaned forward.

  "Let's play us some goddamn hockey," Sprague said, driving straight for the lead vampire.

  Sprague deeked to the right and when the vampire turned Sprague hooked the stick up and harpooned the bastard square in the ribs.

  "It's got to be the heart," Fergus warned, coming around from Sprague's left-hand side to stake another.

  Sprague's vampire curved himself over the stick and seemed to melt down like a limbo dancing icicle in a hot summer breeze. It was a foul black funky sludge that stank worse than a hot August shithouse. Sprague nearly puked his tonsils up but there were too damn many more vampires that still needed killing.

  He swung back for another stake, noting that Fergus' vampire was melting, too.

  "That's two for us," Sprague said. "What's holding you up, Reverend Leo?"

  Three more vampires moved towards the trio of men.

  Leo lobbed his first bottle of holy water at them. It caught one of the vampires square in the chest and the sacred spring water began to eat through him faster than a blow torch cutting through a wad of dry toilet paper. His flesh melted down like candle wax and the white bows of his ribs poked out from the black sludgy mess like the hull of a beached ship poking out of an oil spill.

  Fergus scooted in and swung his hockey stick like a timbering axe, shattering clean through the bone. The shards of the vampire's ribs scudded across the ice to mingle with the shattered bottle glass.

  "Hail Mary, sit on my face," the Reverend Leo Kiniski howled, brandishing his hockey stick crucifix like a maddened bull martyr saint. "The Lord'll be with you shortly, take a number please!"

  He skated into two of the vampires, decapitating one with a swing of his cross.

  "Take two Aspirin and call me in the morning," Leo shouted, just before the second vampire, a beefy, humongous bastard who looked a little like an ex-wrestler, caught hold of Leo and pulled him within fang-range.

  "Oh Jesus," Leo swore or he might have been praying. He reached for another bottle of holy water. "Sprague! Fergus!"

  Only Sprague and Fergus were too busy dealing with three other vampires.

  Leo dropped his second bottle. It broke at his feet.

  "Shit," he swore.

  The heavy-set vampire opened its mouth, a grinning bear trap with attitude, and then all at once it flinched away from Leo's homemade collar.

  "Ha!" Leo shouted. "The power of Christ compels you to fuck the hell out of here."

  The vampire opened his jaws wider and caught Leo in the face, tearing down through the cartilage of the newly-ordained priest's nose.

  "Goddamn it!" Sprague swore, skating in and skewering the heavy-set vampire.

  It began to melt slowly.

  "In the heart, Sprague!" Fergus called out. "Nail that bastard in the heart."

  Fergus skated back and kicked the garbage can over in a desperate attempt to skid a few hockey spears closer to Sprague. It was a good try, but the sticks didn't slide anywhere close to where Sprague and Leo were struggling with the humongous vampire.

  "Damn it, damn it, damn it," Leo cursed through his chewed off nose, reaching down to fumble out one more bottle.

  "Here," Sprague said, catching the bottle from Leo's hands. He broke the neck open on the ice, jammed the broken end directly the vampire's cheek and tipped and ripped upwards. The blessed mineral spring water hissed into the vampire's torn cheek like battery acid.

  "Leo," Sprague called out.

  Only Leo wasn't listening. He crumpled to the ice.

  Fergus shouted for help.

  Sprague looked over.

  Two more vampires had cornered Fergus against the boards. He flailed his homemade hockey spear, trying to keep the two of them at bay.

  Sprague looked around, panicked. What had they been thinking? Three old men against a battalion of vampires. He fended another off, but two more were sliding towards him. Worse yet, they seemed to be getting the hang of the ice.

  And worse than that, the half-faced vampire from the night before was leading the way. He looked to be aiming right for Sprague.

  "Come on you bastard," Sprague said. "I haven't changed my undershorts in the last six years. Chew on me all you want to. I'll curdle your guts and give you a case of permanent funk-fangs."

  He was talking big but he was scared shitless. Old as he was he sure as hell didn't want to die and he damn well didn't want to have to watch his friends die first.

  "Ha!"

  Sprague glanced over. It was Leo who'd laughed. He was lying on the ice, flat on his belly, his blood streaming about him.

  And he was raving like he had lost his mind.

  "I'm lying on ice," Leo raved. "Honest to God, hand-poured and hand-scraped rink ice."

  Sprague hip checked the half-faced vampire, trying his damndest to wipe that half-a-grin from off its half-a-face. Two more joined in with him. Sprague grabbed two more spears from the ice and drove one directly into one of the vampires, finishing it off.

  He was getting good at this game but not fast enough.

  The half-face came at him. Sprague grabbed up his stick, lunged and missed. He slipped, like a goddamned pansy-assed beginner and went down on one knee. He brought the stick up like a quarter staff and jammed it in between the half-faced bastard's teeth, fending him off but not finishing him.

  A second vampire was doing his best to scale Sprague's north face, clambering his back and tearing into the tattered leather of Sprague's second-hand shoulder pads.

  Christ almighty.

  Sprague got ready to die, wondering how many he could take with him.

  Fergus was down with two tearing him to pieces.

  And Leo kept raving.

  "Honest to God, hand-poured and hand-scraped rink ice," Leo shouted.

  What in God's name was he ranting about?

  Leo threw off his hockey gloves off like he was getting set for a scrap.

  And then he put his bare palms directly against the blue line.

  "Hail Mary, full of grace," Leo shouted. "In the name of the Alpha-Centauri New Mexican Born-Again All Saints Church of the Apostle UFO-ology Ziggurats and the holy spirit of Joey R. Smallwood I solemnly hereby bless this here Labrador frozen water."

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Sprague stared helplessly at the half-faced vampire shredding his hockey stick with the force of his fangs and the second vampire who had by now torn Sprague's shoulder pads from off of his shoulders and was working his way through Sprague's suspenders.

  Goddamn it God, Sprague prayed, plea
se don't let me die naked on the ice.

  Fergus stopped screaming.

  Leo kept raving about frozen water.

  The half-faced vampire was spitting fibreglass splinters and laughing out loud while the one on Sprague's back was chewing into a freckle.

  Never mind, Sprague told himself. We've lost and there's no shame to it. Hockey's nothing more than a game, after all.

  And then he stood up.

  It was hard work, standing. He had to throw the one vampire off his shoulders and drag his hockey stick spear loose from the fangs of the other.

  But he was determined to die on his feet.

  "Come on then," he said.

  And then the holy ice, blessed and sanctified by the touch of a genuine internet ordained priest of the Alpha-Centauri New Mexican Born-Again All Saints Church of the Apostle UFO-ology Ziggurats began to work its magic.

  The vampires started melting like the last snowmen of winter.

  Some of them tried to run for the bus, but the ice caught at them like tar catching at the feet of a drowning dinosaur. They melted down into the ice, painting it with their Technicolor gore, clawing themselves towards the boards and screaming like a symphony of banshee-crammed-bagpipes.

  And then they were gone.

  Sprague lay there on the ice, bleeding into it, and laughing.

  This would be the point in the movie, he thought, in which the last vampire would come screaming from out of the bus to massacre the last of the vampire-slayers.

  Only that wasn't happening.

  The other team had lost.

  The bad guys had the shit kicked out of them by a trio of old farts.

  Sprague had to grin.

  He looked over at Fergus.

  Fergus wasn't moving.

  It was hard to move when you were as torn into as many pieces as Fergus was.

  "Damn it," Sprague swore.

  He dragged himself over to Leo.

  This is part where I hold my dying friend in my arms and scream to God, Sprague thought.

  Only Leo was dead and Sprague was too damn tired to scream.

  "Damn it," Sprague swore quietly.

  He stood up slowly and skated to the bench. He kicked his skates off and stepped into his gumboots where he'd left them.