The Vampire Underground

by Brian Rowe

  “Somebody!” Brin screamed. “Somebody help us! Pleeeeeease!”

  Brin heard the roar of the tiny car almost right away, but she knew the sound was a figment of her imagination. It had to be.

  But when Brin turned around, she saw the impossible.

  “No way…”

  The Volkswagon Beetle burst through the crowd of vampires, sideswiping half a dozen and running over another five. The car pulled up to the trio and Ash kicked open the passenger door.

  “Get in the car!” he screamed. “Oh my God! It’s vampires, Brin! Vampires!”

  “No shit!” Brin shouted, pushing Dylan and Lavender into the back before she jumped onto the passenger seat.

  “Close the door!”

  She did, just as a quartet of vampires crashed against the car.

  Ash screamed at the sound of the crash, and then he screamed again when he looked at the pale Brin. “Oh my God! Brin! Are you a vampire, too?”

  “It’s make-up,” she said, grabbing Ash’s hand. “It’s a long story.”

  She knew she didn’t have time, but she did it, anyway. Brin hugged Ash and started kissing him all over his cheeks. “You came! I don’t believe it!”

  A vampire jumped up on the car windshield. Brin and Ash both screamed.

  “Oh my God!” Ash screamed. “We’re in The Lost Boys!” He clamped his hands against the wheel and slammed his foot against the pedal. “I’m in the middle of a real life horror movie!”

  The vampire slid off the windshield, then fell underneath the car’s tires.

  “Ran over another one,” Ash said. He turned to Brin. “Couldn’t you guys have just shot your movie in Grisly like any other sane person?”

  Ash slammed into another vampire.

  “Uhh… Ash… can we discuss that later?” Brin said.

  “Your call!” He looked forward, and they both screamed again. “Oh no!” Ash shouted. “There’s more of them!”

  “And black ice!” Lavender screamed from the back seat, pointing forward.

  “Hold on, everyone!”

  At the moment Ash hit a patch of black ice, he slammed on his brakes and twisted the wheel sharply to the left, making the car spin wildly out of control.

  “Look out!” Lavender screamed as Ash’s Beetle slammed into one vampire, two vampires, five vampires.

  As the car kept spinning out, it mowed down one vampire after another. It was a small vehicle, to be sure, but it was fast and slick enough to work as an effective vampire steamroller.

  After the last of the bloodsuckers disappeared under the car’s tires, Ash hit another patch of snow and managed to stop the spinning. More disconcerting, however, was that the car came to a complete stop.

  “They’re coming!” Lavender shouted. “Oh my God, they’re still coming!”

  “Lavender, calm down!” Brin said. She looked out the back window. The horde of vamps jumped over the devastated bodies cluttered all over the Bodie grounds. Brin turned to Ash. Now she was panicked, too. “Ash! Why aren’t we moving?”

  “It’s not…” He started sweating. He slammed his foot against the pedal. “It’s stuck or something!”

  “It’s what?”

  Dylan leaned forward. “What the hell are you doing? They’re gaining on us!”

  “Ash!” Brin screamed, pushing Dylan back and making Lavender scream with unabashed fright. “Ash, let’s go!”

  “It’s stuck!” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to save our lives!” Brin shouted. “I want you to—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, a vampire smashed his hand through the passenger side window and grabbed Brin’s throat with his sharp killer claws.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Ash!” Brin wrapped her hands around the vampire’s claws and tried to pry them away from her throat. “Ash, please! “

  “I’m gonna try to go in reverse,” he said nonchalantly.

  “All right, fine!” Brin screamed. “Just do something!”

  “Oh my God!” Dylan shouted.

  “There’s like a thousand of them!” Lavender screamed.

  Ash put the car in reverse and slammed his foot against the pedal. It took a few seconds, but Ash managed to back up the car and return to the snow-covered road.

  A second vampire tried to break the driver’s side window, but he wasn’t fast enough. Ash looked in his rearview mirror to see a mob of creatures mere seconds away from jumping on top of the car.

  He slammed his foot down, again, and sped forward, swerving around the mud and heading up the large hill that looked over Bodie Ghost Town. A vampire managed to latch onto the back bumper of the car but quickly lost his grasp. They sped away from the town, from the creatures, from the drama, from Hell. Only one vampire remained, still hanging on for dear life, still with his hand wrapped around Brin’s neck.

  “Get… off me!” Brin shouted as she bit down on the vampire’s palm.

  “One second,” Ash said with a look of determination.

  “One second?” Brin said. “Until what?”

  “Five, four, three, two—”

  A loud scream followed, as did a splatter of blood against Brin’s face, as a lone tree smacked dead center against the unlucky vamp. The severed hand dropped to her lap.

  “Oh God! Gross!” Brin picked up the hand and tossed it out the window. “How many severed vampire hands do I have to see today?”

  “That… was close,” Ash said.

  “Thanks for that,” Brin said to Ash, rubbing her fingers against her swollen neck. She coughed a few times, then turned to the duo in the back. “Are you guys OK?”

  Dylan appeared to be in a daze, while Lavender leaned against the side window, tears streaming down her face. “I’m OK,” Dylan said. “But…”

  “Lavender?” Brin said. “Are you—”

  “Chace...” she said. “He was still alive… when they were drinking his blood…”

  “There was nothing we could have done,” Brin said. “There was—”

  “He was still alive!” Her scream put everyone in the tiny car on edge. “We should’ve tried to save him! We could’ve at least tried!”

  “They were swarming him. If we had tried to save him, we’d be dead, too.”

  “What do you even care?” Lavender glared at Brin. Her eyes were now as red as the vampires’. “You didn’t even know him.”

  “No, I didn’t. But what are you trying to say? That I don’t care that he’s dead? Of course I care!”

  “Then why aren’t you crying? Why aren’t you showing anything?”

  “I’m…” She didn’t know what to say. “I’m processing.” She leaned in toward Lavender and awkwardly put her hand on her leg. “I’m lucky to be alive. We all are.”

  “Chace looked so helpless, so sad…”

  “If he hadn’t kept running and fending for himself, he might still be alive,” Dylan said, chipping in to the conversation. “Did you ever think about that? If he had stuck with us, if he had helped us save Brin in that passageway, maybe he’d still be with us.”

  “Shut up, Dylan!” Lavender said. “Nobody’s talking to you!”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Screw you! Seriously! Nobody freakin’ cares what you think!”

  Brin could sense a verbal shouting match, or, worse, a nasty fight, about to break out in the back seat. As Ash zoomed to the top of the large hill and headed toward the three-mile marker across the way, Brin tried to appease the tension between Dylan and Lavender.

  “We did the best we could, guys,” she said. “Honestly… the fact that we’re not all dead is a blessing. We’re all super lucky to be alive!”

  “Two people are dead!” Lavender shouted. “How can you possibly be looking on the bright side of things?”

  “Because,” Brin said, “I have to.”

  “Oh God… what are we gonna do… when we get back to Grisly… when we get back to school…”

  “I don
’t know. We’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

  “What are we gonna do? Say, hi Mr. Barker! Oh, yes, our film shoot did go well! We left the camera, two members of our group are dead, and we faced a clan of real life vampires! But yeah, it went great—”

  “Oh, screw film class!” Dylan said, entering the conversation again. “We have to go to the police!”

  “We can’t go to the police!” Lavender said. “We go to the police, we’re dead!”

  “But it’s the right thing to do!”

  “What do we tell the police? That vampires killed Sawyer and Chace? They’ll just laugh at us! They’ll throw us in jail for perjury!”

  “What?” Dylan looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here, or, at least, away from the emotionally unstable Lavender.

  “You guys have to trust me on this,” Brin said, trying to remain calm. “Whatever happens in the next few days, we should, in this moment, focus on the fact that we’re alive. Take a deep breath, guys. We’re fine. We’re gonna be all right—”

  “Oh shit!” Ash shouted, slamming on the brakes and sending Dylan, Lavender, and Brin forward, Brin slamming her forehead painfully against the glove compartment.

  Brin leaned back and touched her palm against her forehead. “Oww! What the hell, Ash—”

  “Look!” he shouted.

  Brin peered out the windshield to see, first, the three-mile marker sign on the left, and second, Paul and Anaya racing toward the car on the right.

  “Oh my God!” Brin shouted. “They made it!”

  “Open your passenger door,” Ash said.

  “OK.”

  She did more than that. She opened the door, jumped back out into the calamitous cold, and pushed her seat forward.

  “She’s not gonna be able to fit in here!” Lavender shouted. “She’s five hundred pounds!”

  Brin couldn’t take the negative tone anymore. She turned around and got up in Lavender’s face. “That’s enough, Lavender! You shut the hell up, or you’re gonna be the one we leave behind, understood?”

  That did the trick.

  Brin reached out for Anaya. The girl looked exhausted. Brin didn’t know how far she and Paul had run to make it to this point, but she figured it had to be miles.

  “Here, get in,” Brin said. “Get in the back seat.”

  “Thank you,” Anaya said, bending down and trying to scoot her way into the back of the Beetle. She smashed Dylan and the still shell-shocked Lavender up against the other side before taking her seat. Her face was bright red and her breathing was deep and laborious, but she appeared physically unharmed.

  “OK,” Brin said. “She’s in.” She pushed her passenger seat back and turned to her right. Paul grabbed her hands.

  “Hello again,” Paul said.

  “Hey. You’re coming with us, right? Tell me you’re coming with us.”

  “I don’t know… I don’t think I can…”

  “Brin!” Ash shouted from inside the car. “Let’s go!”

  Brin looked back at the frightened, antsy passengers, then turned back to Paul.

  “They’re going to kill you. Your father is going to kill—” Brin interrupted her sentence as the morning sun appeared over the top of Paul’s head and shined against her face. She moved one of her hands up to block it from her eyes. “It’s so bright,” she said.

  “I know,” Paul said.

  “Wait.” Brin took a step forward and stared tenderly at the handsome Paul. The two were close enough to kiss. “The sunlight… but you’re… you’re a—”

  “Remember when I told you that we were different from all those vampires you see in the movies?”

  Brin heard screaming in the distance. She turned around to see the large vampire clan running toward them. Brin couldn’t believe it; the irate bloodsuckers hadn’t given up.

  “Shit,” Brin said. “We have to go, Paul. Are you coming or not?”

  “Not,” a voice said from mere yards away. There, appearing seemingly out of thin air, was Droz, standing tall, his tuxedo gone, no top hat in sight. He wore a black jacket over blue jeans, his long hair slicked back like Elvis, his hands pressed against his sides, his eyes not red like the other vamps but all the way black with a fiery rage. “Come with me, Son.”

  Paul turned around and shook his head. “No.”

  Droz took a step forward. “What did you say?”

  Brin turned back to Ash. His foot was resting on the pedal. He mouthed to her, “We have to go.”

  But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave Paul here.

  “I’m not going with you, Dad,” Paul said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough of this life.”

  “This life?” The tall, spooky figure took another step forward. Paul didn’t move. “This is the only life you know. And it’s the only life you’re meant to lead. You think you can be one of them? You wouldn’t be able to last a week.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because, Son, I tried. Long before you were born I tried to exist among the living. It’s impossible. The desire… the hunger… it becomes overwhelming. It’ll kill you before you have a chance to take another breath.”

  “It’s my decision to make, Dad.”

  Brin heard the rev of Ash’s engine behind her. She could also hear the vampires in the distance racing toward them.

  Droz reached out and grabbed his son’s hand. “You’re coming with me,” he said. “No questions asked. And I’m going to try real goddamned hard to forgive you.” They started walking toward the frozen lake.

  “No!” Paul shouted, trying to rid himself of his dad’s grasp. He couldn’t. “Dad! Please!”

  His father had a grimace on his face that promised nothing but pain for Paul for the rest of the day, and most likely, his life. “Shut your mouth, you worthless nothing.”

  “Dad! No! I’m not going back!”

  Droz punched Paul in the face, then dug his sharp fingernails into his left arm. “You don’t have a choice, boy.” Droz raised his fist to punch him again.

  “No!” Paul screamed. “Nooooooo!”

  Droz swung forward to strike his son a second time, when a hand grabbed his arm and twisted him around.

  “He said no,” Brin said, calmly, before smashing a sharp rock against Droz’s face. He stumbled backward, more surprised than anything else, as black blood started gushing from his left cheek. He let go of Paul and fell back against the snowy ground.

  The horde of vamps was in the distance no longer. They were five seconds away. Three seconds away. Ash’s car was already on the move. Brin looked at Paul, and Paul looked at Brin. They had one shot.

  She grabbed his hand in hers. “Come on,” she said, and the duo started sprinting toward the car.

  “Hurry!” Ash shouted from inside. “Hurry, Brin!”

  Brin looked to her left. The vampires were gaining. A thousand beams of red light shot in every direction.

  “Oh my God,” Paul said. “This can’t get any worse.”

  As Brin started huffing and puffing, and as Ash’s car seemed to get farther away, she felt the ground underneath her start to crumble.

  “Oh, it can get worse,” Brin said. “A lot worse!”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “The ground!” Paul shouted. “It’s caving in!”

  “Brin, come on!” Ash slowed the car down, but not for long. The vampires, at least a hundred or more, charged toward Brin and Paul like a stampede of voracious wolves.

  Brin looked back at Droz, who had one hand pressed against his bloody cheek, and the other held out in front of him, like he was the one—the only one—with the power to open up this hole in the world.

  She wanted to stop running. She wanted to quit. But she knew quitting wasn’t an option; she had gotten this far.

  Brin closed her eyes, bit down on her bottom lip, and started running as fast as her legs would let her, her hand grasped in Paul’s so that he wouldn’t fall behind.

  The car was closer. Brin
found her one chance to leap into the passenger seat.

  Ash kicked the door open. “Jump in! Come on!”

  Paul was lagging. Brin had to let go of his hand. The ground was erupting beneath them. She looked back, for a split second, to see a giant hole forming behind them.

  “Jump!” Ash shouted. “For Christ’s sake, now!”

  Brin ran for two more seconds, silently prayed, and leapt forward, landing stomach first on the passenger seat, her legs sticking out the side.

  “Hold on!” Ash shouted, grabbing Brin’s arm and pulling her all the way inside the vehicle. “I’ve got you!”

  “Is he coming?” Brin said, now safely in the car.

  “He’s not gonna make it,” Ash said. “We have to leave him here.”

  “No!” she shouted. “He saved my life, Ash! He saved all our lives!”

  “He didn’t save my life!” Ash darted his head around to see the black hole behind them growing bigger. “And right now he seems to be harming our lives more than helping them!”

  “Ash! Please… do this for me!”

  “No!” he screamed. “I’m not gonna have us all die because you’ve got some goddamn crush, Brin!”

  She stared at him incredulously. “It’s not a crush,” Brin said. “I’m not interested in him like that.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Of course not!”

  Dylan leaned forward. He looked ready to throw up. “Can you guys please discuss this after we’re not dead?”

  The hole grew bigger. The car was about to fall in. The vampires ran around it, still gaining on the car. Droz hadn’t moved at all. He was standing way off in the distance, a chilling grin on his face.

  Brin turned to her right. She couldn’t believe it. Paul hadn’t given up. He was still rushing toward the car.

  “Jump into my arms!” Brin shouted.

  “I can’t!” he said.

  “Don’t be a girl! Jump!”

  Two other vampires leapt toward Paul, but he jumped before they could reach him. He missed Brin but grabbed the door handle. His entire body hung out the side for a scary moment, before Brin grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him inside the car.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Ash, step on it! Floor this puppy!”