Todd fought through the pain with a wide smile. His tongue probed the places where only mush gums and sharp splinters had remained moments before. He could feel his jawbone realigning and baby teeth coming in.
It was great to be alive.
Thumbing the button, he said, “Wait for me, Jim. I’ll be right there.”
“Damn right you will,” Zeebe growled. He said other things, too, but Todd wasn’t listening.
Groaning and moving slowly, he dropped the two-way, stuffed McConlon’s gun in his waistband and set out to find his car mechanic.
Chapter Sixty-One
The thing kept coming, roaring up the long driveway, barreling through the first line of defense and heading straight for the Sundowners’ second junk metal barricade.
Jermaine Whittock, crouched next to Paul on the balcony, said “Holy Jesus” in a way that sounded honestly reverential. Freddie and Denver came up behind and joined them, Denver with a red-stained pillowcase wrapped tightly over the fleshiest part of his arm. Half of his face was bloody and still sparkled with glass from the window, but the rain was washing away the worst of it.
Paul closed his eyes a moment before impact, so he didn’t see the town’s blood donor vehicle, one Molotov-targeted tire aflame, slam into the second car blockade. He heard it though, the screech of metal and the compacted explosion of gas tanks going up. His eyes popped open in time to see a tower of fire consuming the night air. He watched Ponytail Pete scurry out from wherever he’d been hiding, hoist the chainsaw from his back and tear across the yard.
Almost made it, too. But then the blood bus veered sharply, squealed through torn metal and churned him under its wheels. Denver made a sound like he was about to be sick, but there was no time. The huge, battered vehicle was still coming.
The four men on the balcony remained locked in place, Paul certain that the thing had to slow down, had to stop eventually. Only it didn’t.
“Uh oh,” Denver said, pretty much summing up the situation.
It hit the front of the motel with a sound that was even more deafening than when it had taken out that second blockade. It jackknifed, the backside twisting violently so that men and a handful of women inside it got launched out the doors and shattered windows, some landing in one of the gas tank bonfires.
They got up again, most of them, and ran screaming, fanning the flames that followed.
Paul watched, mesmerized, unable to even think of saving himself as the huge inflamed vehicle turned the balcony railings to twists and jags of metal. He felt gravity make an interesting move, pitching him forward, up and over the disappearing railing. He landed on his shoulder on the blood vehicle’s long expanse of hot flat hood, and felt the hatchet in his waistband bite into his flesh near a hipbone.
Painful as that was, it was nothing compared to how it felt a second later when a large body landed on his back and his vertebrae shifted to accommodate the load.
He grunted, rolled sideways and shrugged Jermaine off. Still in motion, Jermaine crawled toward the Smith & Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece that had skittered away upon impact.
Paul let his eyes retrace the route of their fall and found Denver Dugan still clinging from the broken balcony with his one good arm. For another moment or two. Then the big man fell. He hit the back of the vehicle that had snagged the other two and slammed to the soft ground.
Paul groped under his shirt and brought out the small ax, its sharp edge tipped with a sheen of his own blood. Wincing, he felt around under there, traced a two-inch gash and extracted more wetness on his fingertips. Not much more, he convinced himself.
“Look out, man,” Jermaine muttered.
Having struggled to his knees, Jermaine gripped the .38 he’d retrieved and aimed it in a two-handed stance at the dark-haired figure muscling itself onto the flat top of the big bus with them. Paul winced in expectation of the shot, but soon understood why Jermaine stood stock-still with the gun still leveled.
Up close, Patty Craven looked barely out of high school. Her hair, dyed jet black with streaks of red, looked rebelliously self-cut with dull scissors. Nevertheless, her efforts couldn’t quite hide her pale natural beauty. It would be impossible to blow that innocent face away with a gun.
As her eyes danced back and forth between the two wide-eyed men, Paul could hear the sounds of the panicky and dying. The night sky lit up with the occasional spark of a gasoline bomb or the steady flare-up of ruptured fuel tanks. Shots were fired continuously, and D.B. was shouting, “Quick, someone give me a loaded gun.”
Soon, he knew, they’d be out of ammunition, and then it would all be over.
“My brother,” the girl said, crouching.
Then she screeched, nothing human to it, and that must have been the same thought Jermaine had, for the revolver in his band barked once, nearly taking off the side of her head. Her body whipped around. She stumbled and nearly toppled from the top of the high vehicle before righting herself, turning and charging, with an unearthly squeal of pure hatred, at the man who shot her.
The gun went off again, this time producing a heart-sinking click of a sound. Jermaine sighed. The girl leaped at him. And Paul stuck his hatchet in her path and felt it find brittle obstacle, then sink into her chest. The beastly cries of rage turned to a single restrained groan as the vampiress’ forward momentum carried her, with the blood-smeared blade buried in her, past Paul and into Jermaine. They both fell over the side.
Paul heard another scream. Freddie. He looked up. Somehow his friend had escaped being pitched from the balcony when the flaming bus hit it. He’d curled one leg over a jagged railing and hung on for dear life. He also held onto a chainsaw with both hands. He had Paul locked in his gaze and was making tossing motions with it.
Paul held out his arms and caught the heavy tool amid fresh shivers of back pain. Freddie nudged the air with one hand, pointing out the front of the bus deck.
Duane Purcell had risen from a crouched position at the front of the flattop and was now taking cautious steps toward him.
Paul’s hands felt for the pull-cord, his eyes never leaving the rebel leader.
The vampire had somehow lost his ubiquitous ball cap. Without it, his dark hair was plastered flat to his scalp except where strands clung wetly to his low forehead. His eyes were small and hard and kept shutting tight and opening again in a nervous twitch. Glints of white light twinkled in his irises as if the reflection of a hundred battlefield fires. There was not a glimmer of intelligence or leadership about him, only the unstoppable instincts of a powerful predator. He was the strongest of a clan whose brightest didn’t matter.
Behind Purcell, Paul could see others climbing up to join him, using the open passenger door as a ladder.
Paul pulled the cord and the chainsaw roared to life. It shuddered in his hands so that he almost dropped it, taking off his own two feet, but he finally got it under control.
Purcell kept coming. He took slow, sure steps that ended just out of arm’s reach. The vampire’s nostrils twitched as nervously as his eyelids.
Paul swung the saw in a feeble batter’s chop, nearly fainting from the torment it caused his back. Jolts of electric fire coursed up and down his spine and into every pain center on his body. With trembling arms, he heaved the cumbersome tool back onto his right shoulder and waited. He’d black out from one more wild swipe like the first.
Purcell took another small step, and then went rigid.
Here he comes, Paul thought, wildly wondering what he was going to do.
Wrong again. Purcell’s hand went behind him and came up with a small pistol. He smiled as he lifted it chest high, Paul now thinking sulkily, as Freddie had done before, about the unfairness of vampires carrying guns. Without a moment to lose, he stepped suddenly forward and swung the roaring chainsaw with everything he had.
Purcell fired wildly. He threw a hand over his face as the saw snarled in his clothing, taking his gun arm neatly off at the elbow.
He howled at
the spray of blood, tissue and fine bone matter.
Paul didn’t wait to see or hear more. He launched himself from the back of the big deck and fell hard onto the wet ground next to Denver.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The roar of gunfire and the confused cries of men and women drew him until he was close enough to the action atop the steep rise to hear the whine of bullets breaking through the rain. He never tired and he saw well enough that his feet never tangled in the slippery brush. Small, hard raindrops continued to pelt him, singeing his raw skin, but it never mattered.
He could still taste the blood of two dead men on his gums and in the far reaches of his mouth. The stuff worked like an energy supplement. Working his tongue over his teeth, he found them all intact. He surged with rageful power and the overwhelming need to feed again. His nostrils led him unerringly the way he’d come.
Zeebe.
Todd dropped silently behind the base of another ancient elm and studied the nightscape for an explanation for the stale smoke and lung rot his nostrils had unearthed. Then he saw it, the hulking shadow just across the creek bed, crouching near where the ground rose to become the ravaged backyard of the Sundown Motel.
Todd rubbed his jaw, only partially aware that the agony of the bullet-pulped mass had dulled to the nagging ache of a bruised chin. The gut shot was like heartburn, the hole in his hand scabbing over.
The figure stirred. Jim Zeebe turned slowly as he rose from his crouched position. He stretched his legs as though conscious that he’d need them in prime working order. He shook the dirt from his jeans and chuckled softly.
“Rookie vampires, they forget they ain’t the only ones got the know-how.”
Todd stepped away from the tree, feeling a little foolish at expecting to take Zeebe by storm. No problem. He could do it this way, too. “You and me,” he said.
Only, instead of the mano y mano confrontation his mind had conjured, Todd caught a flicker of movement from the other vampire’s arm. The gun roared and the bullet picked Todd up and threw him to the ground.
Once more he found himself staring up at the white clouds and trying to keep the rain off his face. In the same way that sex was never so tense after the first time, the third shooting in the space of a quarter hour was almost anticlimactic.
Not that the lead burrowed into his left shoulder blade didn’t hurt. He bit back a groan and tried ignoring the bone splinters churned up at the site of the neat red hole.
The splash of heavy footfalls brought his mind back to more pressing concerns. He rolled to his right as three more bullets slammed into the ground, sending up mud and rainwater geysers dangerously close to his skull.
He kept rolling until he got behind that gnarled elm again. As he did, he felt the blunt weight of the gun he’d grabbed from McConlon. Once behind the tree and on his knees, he ripped the nine out of his waistband and fired off three wild shots without looking, hopefully in the general direction of the vampire. Something to slow him down, at least. Make him think.
He heard Zeebe hit the ground with a grunt and scramble into the brush.
Wincing at the tongues of fire emanating from his ragged shoulder, Todd hugged the tree and waited for whatever came next.
Big, dumb Zeebe wasn’t so patient. With a roar, he crashed out of the brush and charged straight for Todd, spraying gunfire. He ran with a sideways, lumbering gait, his thick legs seeming to pull the rest of his big body reluctantly forward.
Todd’s finger froze on the trigger. He watched in helpless panic as Zeebe let loose with a barrage of five, six, seven shots from a dozen feet away and closing. One whining shot splintered the tree, shooting bark chips into Todd’s left eye and the zinging missile after that kicked him high in the cheekbone.
Dammit, it hurt.
Time slowed as he felt the hard little metal crunch easily through bone as it angled toward his brain.
This is it, he thought as a pain flare went off behind his closed eyes. His fingers lost the gun, then lost all feeling as he toppled slowly, gracelessly to the ground.
Again, the wet sky and the darkness, his thoughts on how peaceful the night felt even with the steady chatter of small arms fire and the sharp crackle of gasoline bombs in the distance.
Todd blinked against the sudden glare. He shifted to see the vampire Zeebe thrashing and jerking his flaming limbs, sending tendrils of white fire into the dark heavens.
He watched with no emotions. A mental numbness seemed to separate him from what he saw. It was time to sleep.
Footsteps drew nearer. He looked up, not really caring.
“Joy?” he asked.
She knelt beside him, cradling his head, and that was the best moment of all. He tried to touch her, but his fingers wouldn’t move. He watched the fiery, screaming ball that was Zeebe; watched it as it finally crumpled to the ground and brittled with ash.
Joy kissed him. His wife smelled of gasoline and flame, sweat and exertion, and never smelled better. She put another beer bottle bomb and a plastic lighter in her lap next to his head.
“This one’s for us,” she whispered.
“No. Fight them,” he croaked before the unyielding darkness closed in.
Chapter Sixty-Three
There was a period of time that must have been no more than seconds when the battle dimmed and his body hurt no more. A beautiful, serene space of time, but it ended all too soon.
The pain brought him back, lightning bolts of it. The air reeked of acrid smoke and rain.
Paul lurched awkwardly to his feet, clamping a hand over the liquid warmth at the top of his hip. He’d wrenched his shoulder killing the girl, and now the whole area was numbing so that he couldn’t make a fist of his right hand. His foot tripped over the fallen Denver Dugan, whose huge hand still gripped the section of balcony railing he’d brought down with him. Paul locked an arm around the big man’s waist, and tugged. Doing so, he clenched his jaw, but a moan still escaped.
A scuffing sound distracted him, a murmur nearly lost in the cacophony of fire and death. Paul looked up as Purcell dragged himself a step closer to the top edge of the stranded blood bus. One arm stub dangled from torn tendons. He bent his knees. Sprang.
Paul’s hand somehow found the sheared metal railing section in Denver’s unconscious grip. He grabbed it and plunged one end into the muddy ground before rolling awkwardly and painfully aside.
Duane Purcell seemed to sense what was coming. Plummeting, he waved his arms like wings in a futile effort to stave off gravity and the awaiting metal spear. It ran through his torso with ease and reappeared the next instant on the other side, pinioning him like a tortured bug. The vampire’s mouth fell open in an eruption of black blood.
And the sky went white.
It was like the landing of the mother ship in a UFO movie. The blunt, stabbing light ended all sputtering gunfire. A chainsaw slowly whined down to a conclusion and the screams of dying men and women softened as even they seemed to show an interest in upcoming events.
Purcell squirmed on the metal stake, his chainsaw-severed arm forming new tissue before Paul’s eyes.
Paul stumbled away. He walked alongside the blackened, smoldering bus, now leaking radiator water and the machine’s other viscous life fluids. He glanced up to assure himself he wasn’t going to be leaped upon by any more night creatures, but the only perceptible movement was Jermaine Whittock disentangling his limbs from those of a twitching Patty Craven.
Like everyone else, Jermaine’s attention was on the long line of headlights pulling up the long driveway and fanning out so that it was almost impossible to look anywhere without seeing the high beams of cars and trucks and SUVs and motorcycles and vans and 4x4s.
Blinded as he was, he didn’t see the stretch vehicle at the fore, but heard it come to a stop some thirty feet away. Heard the chunk as its electric door was released. Miles Drake stepped out of the long gray Lincoln.
In a crash of red and blue lights, a cruiser intercepted the old vampire, an
d Bill Sandy stepped out to join him. Tabitha Drake left the Lincoln to flank her father as well.
“Purcell,” the master vampire said in a low purr.
Paul turned sharply at the small sound behind him.
Duane Purcell stood on rubbery legs, blinking into the car lights. He held in two bloody arms the glistening section of metal rail that had held him moments before like a mounted butterfly. It was dizzying to imagine the inhuman strength it must have taken to unpin himself.
There was no defeating a power like that.
“Get the fucker,” someone growled.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Jason Penney, horribly disfigured by flame and riddled by bullet fire, disentangled himself from the crowd to stand by the bus wreckage. His hair hung limp, gray with soot.
Miles Drake took a couple slump-shouldered steps. His cheap suit coat hung loose, ill-fitting and formless, on his bony shoulders.
“Why?” he asked in a hollow voice as Purcell met him in the circle formed by car lights and dark spectators. It looked as though the entire town had relocated to the demolished front yard of the Sundown as speechless witnesses to fire and mayhem. “Why do you treat me like this for saving your life?”
The younger vampire clutched the bloody spear of railing in one fisted hand, held it chest high like a pole vaulter contemplating his kick start. In the spotlight glare of a hundred high beams, his tattered shirt glistened with his own black gut blood, but he hardly seemed to notice. His severed arm had grown back, though it was still thin and puckered and he held it as tentatively as new growth. “You’re a thing of the past,” he told Drake.
Then he charged.
“Die, old man!” he screamed.
Miles Drake sidestepped the attack in a flash of footwork that should have convinced Purcell that he’d underestimated his enemy. The younger vampire skidded to a stop several feet from his intended victim and slipped to one knee on the rain-slick grass. He was up again in an instant, a snarl boiling up from his throat.
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