by Clark Hays
The war machines flew in fast from behind the mountains, running without lights and blacker even than the night so their presence was only revealed by the displacement of the stars. “Hit the lights,” Lenny shouted and a dome of light burned away the darkness. The air pulsed with the mechanical throbbing and fifty feet overhead, the sinister bellies of the airships gleamed like giant dragonflies.
And then, impossibly, it began to rain vampires.
They threw themselves from the open cargo doors, howling like lunatics. No ropes or parachutes, freefalling the distance, laughing all the way. They crashed into the sand with an impact that would have finished a mortal, only to pick themselves up and charge headfirst into the stunned defenders.
“Holy shit,” Dad whispered to Lenny. “If that don’t beat all.”
“You need to get to Lizzie and Tucker,” Lenny said. “I’ll cover you.”
Already, Lazarus’ men had recovered somewhat and the sound of the battle filled the air. Lenny stood and blasted a wall of stakes in front of Dad who was hightailing it through the courtyard.
The high velocity stakes cleared a pathway for him, but more and more vampires crashed around him. One fell from the sky and landed in his path, instinctively grabbing his ankle. Dad tucked the barrel of his pistol under the vampire’s chin and blew most of its face away. The creature clutched the ragged remains of his face and moaned, leaving Dad free to sprint for safety, as fast as a seventy year-old man can sprint.
He joined Tucker, who was on the porch with a shotgun in hand, dispatching the invaders as quickly as he could reload.
Dad leaned on the railing, winded. “Some vacation this has turned out to be,” he wheezed.
“You okay?” Tucker asked.
“Hell no, I ain’t okay,” he said. “It’s raining bloodthirsty vampires and you want to know if I’m okay? Watch out on your left. My only boy is dating the queen of the undead and you want to know if I’m okay? There’s another one.”
“I’d hate for you to get this far only to die from a heart attack.”
“Get the hell out of my way, boy. I can still teach you a thing or two.” He stomped inside.
The dogs made a show of hackles and growls as he entered, but then came crabbing up with drooping hindquarters, scared and confused. Elita glared savagely at Dad as he approached Lizzie, who sat pale and quiet on the bed, a stake in her hands.
“Help her,” Elita said simply.
“You okay?” Dad asked.
Lizzie shook her head slowly. “I don’t think I will ever be okay again.” She looked at the stake. “I could end this all right now. If I was dead, dead for real, all this would stop.”
Dad gently took the stake from her. “You do that, you’d be dooming a lotta folks to a worse fate. Old Julius wouldn’t give up. He’d just figure out new ways to do bad things. And do you know what’d happen to my boy? You’d be killing him too. You’d be killing hope and that’s the one thing everybody needs.” He looked at Elita. “And I do mean everybody.”
Lizzie shook her head. “I should be out there.”
“You should be where your chances of survival are greatest,” Elita said. “Not only to thwart Julius. There is an entire nation of my kind who have lived for centuries in the shadows. If they ever are to see a new world, it will be up to you.” She paused. “Against all odds, you have survived what should have destroyed you.”
In the silence that followed, the sounds of battle raged outside. Lizzie peered out the window. “I hope Lazarus knows what he is doing.” She looked back at Elita. “It seems I have much to do in the coming eternity, but,” she added, “I will need your help.”
Elita smiled faintly.
More and more vampires fell into the battle, despite the almost constant roar of the miniguns and flash of the defenders’ rifles.
From his place on the wall, Lenny could see some of the invaders break away from the engagement to claw their way to the bunkers and the security devices below. “This ain’t going our way,” he murmured, laying aside the Warthog and unshouldering an M-203.
Sighting in on the closest airship, he sent a 40-mm high explosive round streaking into the underside. The explosion shook the compound. Shards of metal rained down and the other choppers, rattled by the shockwave, wobbled off to set down in the desert outside the circle of lights. Lenny, catching Tucker’s eyes across the way, gave him a thumbs up. Tucker returned it jubilantly, but his smile turned to horror as a shadowy figure loomed up over the adobe and pulled Lenny out of sight into the darkness beyond.
“Lenny,” he screamed, wading oblivious through the death around him. He reached the wall unharmed and vaulted up onto it, but there was no sign of Lenny, and he screamed in frustration, sweeping up the gun and spinning to shoot stake after stake into the melee below. Abruptly, all the electronic security devices stopped. The miniguns died. The massive lights went out. The heavy gates swung open. The night was lost.
FIFTY-THREE
Lenny never even saw his assailant. His eyes had been on Tucker and he was half blinded from the explosion. But judging by the strength of the arms clamped around him, it was a vampire dragging him over backward.
They landed with a bone-jarring thud and Lenny planted his feet and drove his head up and back, feeling the vampire’s nose give way with a crunch and the grip loosen. He spun around with the rifle in hand, but the undead combatant was smiling through this minor pain. He thrust a massive hand out and crushed the barrel as easily as clay, turning it up and away from his chest.
Lenny let go of the gun and darted out toward the temporary safety of the rocks and cactus, praying no mines were still active. He heard a laugh and then heavy footfalls behind him, closing fast.
He fished a Browning Hi-Power out of his gear vest and emptied it over his shoulder without turning to aim or even gauge the effects, knowing the nine-millimeter ammo would be practically useless.
Just for fun, he threw the empty pistol behind him and almost laughed when he heard it strike something solid, eliciting a groan of pain. The footsteps drew even closer and, though he was running his fastest, he knew the vampire was toying with him. At the last second, he dropped into a ball and felt the shins of his pursuer crash into his sides, tripping the vampire and sending him flailing and stumbling face-first into a large saguaro cactus. He howled in pain as the needles sank into undead flesh, but Lenny didn’t linger to gloat, he was already loping farther into the rocks and shadows.
In the deep pockets of his combat vest there was a lone thermite grenade. Against a highly mobile target, it was of little use. There was no way to keep it close to the target without toasting himself.
Then his fingers closed around a roll of duct tape and an idea came to him. He unclipped the Vietnam-style tomahawk from his belt and jumped over a rock.
The vampire was silent, but enraged. His nose was broken and would take most of the night to heal. The cactus needles stung like hell. And he was hungry. He looked forward to feeding on this little man, and scented the night wind. The Adamite was close.
He cleared the wind-smoothed boulder in a single bound, landing softly. His hand streaked out to Lenny’s shoulder and spun him around.
Lenny turned with the impetus, raised the brutally shaped hatchet overhead and drove the diamond-pointed edge between the vampire’s eyes. The undead assailant dropped to his knees, stunned.
His glazed eyes refocused in time to watch Lenny pull the pin from the grenade taped firmly to the handle of the hatchet.
“Shit,” the vampire said, clawing at the deadly bundle.
“Yep,” Lenny said, diving away and covering his eyes. There was a whoosh of ignition and he turned to see half a body, from the waist down, slowly topple over through a bank of chemical smoke.
Alone and weaponless, save for a knife, he eyed the now-distant compound and the eerie flicker of gun light dying out within.
Parallel to him and a little over a mile away, the black helicopters were disgorging a swar
m of vampires running screaming toward the now-open gates of the compound.
“Christ,” he muttered, “it looks like Lawrence of Arabia.” He broke into a trot toward the idled choppers.
Amidst the din of the battle, the brief flare out in the darkness was lost to Tucker, who was feeling the first real loss of the combat.
A numbness filled him as he imagined living to tell June that it was his fault Lenny was gone. He crouched in the shadows, the rage now vanished and nothing coming to take its place. He watched the enemy pour through the gate like water from a cup, watched Lazarus, his massive frame clearly visible through the sea of bodies, throw himself into the breach.
In the midst of this undead siege engine came Julius, the battle reducing him to little more than an animal himself. A violent, powerful animal with a cunning mind, but an animal nevertheless.
His hands flashed through flesh and bone, tearing and snapping, and all who crossed him died or else shrank back. All except Lazarus.
Separated by the sea of bodies locked in immortal combat around them, their eyes met. Lazarus, standing like a mountain of retribution in the swirling chaos, saw his most ancient of enemies. His eyes burned brightly as he made his way forward, bodies of attackers tossed carelessly away like firewood. Julius snarled and rolled his eyes, redirecting his whirlwind of destruction in a straight line toward Lazarus. Vampires and humans alike fell under his onslaught like wheat before a scythe, until the two stood face to face, only a dozen yards of casualty-strewn sand separating them.
Lazarus threw himself like a battering ram into his lifelong enemy, his very frame transformed into a weapon. Julius staggered back with a snarl and a look of stunned surprise. Lazarus reared over him and dropped again, like a giant eagle. Again and again the ancient foes struck, clothes shredding and flesh tearing away to reveal bone and muscle. Any mortal would have died a dozen times, but the two kings fought on.
The other fighting died down as all eyes turned to the chaos before them. Elita stood on the porch, her hands bloody from stacking up the dead before her. The savagery painted on her face began to dissolve into awe as she watched Lazarus and Julius. Lizzie walked slowly out to lean on her, her body bowed by exhaustion. Drawn to the sight of her, Tucker raced past the soldiers stilled by the spectacle and regained her side. He took her hand.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“Weak.”
“If Lazarus takes him, I think it’ll be over. Without Julius, the others will leave.”
She squeezed his hand.
Lazarus had the upper hand. His weight and ferocity were wearing on the much smaller Julius, who was on one knee and bracing for the next charge.
“At last,” Lazarus bellowed. “After all these centuries, it comes down to this. A simple contest of brute strength.” He drew back and then threw himself forward, hands outstretched.
“Nothing is ever that simple,” Julius hissed, pulling a golden crucifix from inside his tattered clothes. One end had been hammered to a dull point and as Lazarus descended, Julius thrust it up and into his heart.
“No,” Lizzie screamed from the porch.
Lazarus staggered back, staring at the holy icon with a morbid curiosity. The night was completely silent as he looked over to the porch. “Ahh, I’m sorry,” he whispered to Lizzie. “I failed you. I never thought …”
He pitched face down into the sand, his own weight driving the instrument of death farther in so that the tip protruded from his back, glistening in the half light.
“How quaint,” Julius said as he stood, rearranging the shambles of his clothes. “He still believes.”
In the silence, Alexandra howled pitifully and threw herself toward her fallen master, but Rex blocked her way and Tucker reached down to grab her collar. A roar broke out from Julius’ men, who set upon their foes with redoubled vigor. Julius strolled casually toward the house, his damaged flesh already slowly regenerating.
“Wasn’t that entertaining? Elita, I trust you are well?”
“Never better,” she said.
“Something has been bothering me,” Julius said. “Maybe you could set me straight. Just whose side are you on? I sent you out to kill Sully and yet I see him cowering in the shadows. I can’t imagine him getting the better of you. So, tell me, whose side are you on?”
“Yours, of course.”
He nodded. “Just getting close to the enemy, then?”
“Exactly.”
“And all this?” He gestured at the bodies around them. “For the sake of show, I suppose?”
“I wasn’t sure you could beat him.”
“And if I didn’t, who could blame you for wanting the power yourself. How else would you move up the social ladder? Poor little girl, always from the wrong side of the tracks.” He smiled at Tucker and Lizzie. “At any rate, I know you well enough to know you are on my side now, since I won.” He motioned and she smiled and moved into his arms. “I did miss your company. You can be so amusing.”
“You traitorous bitch,” Tucker hissed, swinging his shotgun up.
“Tucker, no,” Lizzie said, stopping the arc with the palm of her hand.
“Yes, wait,” Julius agreed. “Perhaps you could kill both of us, but I rather doubt it. Even if you did, my men have strict orders.” He pointed at the multitude of faces gathered beyond the house.
“If I die, so will you, your father, Sully, the dog,” he paused when he noticed Alexandra, “dogs, I should say. And,” he added, “Elizabeth, who as an immortal, can endure the rigors of rape and torture for a very, very long time.”
He smiled magnanimously. “I have given you a great deal of time to play out your little games and now they have come to an end. I won. The power will be mine and your lives are forfeit. All that remains are the details of your dying.” He kissed Elita lightly on the cheek. “I rather fancy the feel of world dominion.”
His gloating was interrupted as the first of a chain of explosions rocked the distant choppers, each igniting the one next to it.
The firestorm lit up their faces and dazzled their eyes, and as Julius turned his head in annoyance, Elita twined her fingers through his hair and jerked his head back savagely. “Run,” she screamed, and then plunged her nails deep into his exposed throat. Julius pitched backward with a shout, dragging them both into the crowd of surprised vampires that closed around them like a curtain.
Tucker seized Lizzie by the arm and dragged her inside, with Dad and Sully close behind and bolted the iron door in place.
“We have to help her,” Lizzie cried.
“Too late,” Sully said, grabbing her by the waist and scooting her forward. “If we linger, her sacrifice will be in vain.”
Already the door was echoing from the sounds of forced entry and a clamor of voices could be heard.
They fled through the house, down the stairs and into the chambers below, racing past the bodies of the dead and the dying.
Tucker steered them through the maze of corridors and burst breathless into the darkened room where the pool shimmered faintly. “Through here.”
“Through where?” Lizzie asked.
“The water. It leads to the tunnel.” He helped her jump in and then handed over a reluctant Alexandra. She held her breath and bobbed down, disappearing. Sully climbed in next.
Rex watched the whole thing with bewilderment and balked when Tucker reached for him. “You have to go, you idiot dog. Unless you want me to leave you here with the vampires.”
Rex didn’t budge, so Tucker motioned for Sully to go through next.
“You’re next, old man,” he said to Dad.
“This is a good set of clothes, Tucker.”
“Get in.” He pushed Dad, who fell sputtering into the pool.
“Take Rex.”
“Come on, you dumb mutt,” Dad called, but Rex backed away and eyed them like they were crazy.
“He never did much like water,” Tucker said. “Go on, I’ll drag him through.”
Dad disa
ppeared and Tucker grabbed Rex by the collar and pulled him to the edge of the pool, but as he climbed in, his grip loosened. Rex darted out of reach and sat down, trembling. Tucker stood chest-deep in the water and shook his head. “What the hell are you doing?”
He pulled a pair of grenades out of his pocket and laid them on the edge. “See these. I’m going to pull the pins and take off and so help me God, if you’re still sitting there, you’re gonna get blowed up.”
He waited, but Rex sat motionless. “Rex, I do not need this,” Tucker said. “There’s plenty of other shit going on, and I shouldn’t have to be talking to you like a little kid. Now come on.” Rex didn’t move.
“I ain’t joking. Once I pull these pins you’ve got ten seconds to make up your mind.”
Rex lay down and put his head on his paws.
“Aww, for Chrissakes, Rex,” Tucker said as he crawled out, dripping water. There was a roar outside the room, and the thunder of footsteps.
With a yelp, Rex shot past Tucker and made a mighty leap into the water, disappearing. Tucker pulled the pins from the grenades, tossed them toward the entrance and dove into the churning water.
FIFTY-FOUR
Julius stood in the rubble of the hallway, scattered fires burning around him. He massaged the side of his neck, now savaged and raw.
Elita’s attack left him drained to the point he could not, as yet, sense Elizabeth. He knew they had retreated deep into the caverns and destroyed the entrance to this cave. Were they waiting breathlessly on the other side, he wondered, or was there another means of escape?
He reached out with his mind, but felt nothing of Elizabeth. Instead, he felt a weakness, and crouched down disoriented. There was something else. Voices.
He heard the voices for the first time. Faint, but there nonetheless.
They were laughing. Mocking him.
He pressed a knuckle to his temple and fought against the ache blossoming there. And the voices.
And the whisper of insanity.
He must find her. He would find her.
