“You're the one who caused this in the first place, you lunatic!”
“It was God's will. I am only His instrument.”
Emily turned her head away and sobbed.
The survivors silently faced Sinder. Hands balled into fists. Eyes narrowed.
“You know . . .” Alex paused to suck at his teeth. His right hand hovered casually near his pistol, while the left rested on the hilt of his katana. “Bein' a vampire hunter and all, most of my job involves killin' monsters. Out there in the streets today, I thought for a second that's what I was doin'. But pretty soon I realized, they ain't monsters. They're just dead folk. I pity them poor bastards more than anything. First gettin' murdered, then denied even the peace of the grave. It was startin' to bring me down. I was startin' to have me a real bad day. Felt more like a janitor than a hunter. But now?” He nodded slightly. “Now I feel better. Because finally, I found me a monster that I can kill.”
Sinder laughed and spread his arms wide. “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, sayeth the Lord.”
“I reckon you can discuss that with the Lord when you meet him.” Alex drew so fast the pistol seemed to appear in his hand. He thumbed back the hammer.
Harbaugh lurched forward and seized Alex's arm. The .45 boomed, echoing in the gym, lighting up the walls for an instant with strobe-light brilliance. The shot tunneled into the hardwood floor.
Alex wrestled with Harbaugh for the gun. “Goddammit, what—”
Harbaugh moaned and bared his teeth, blindly seeking flesh.
“Ah, hell . . .”
The sheriff's grip was ice cold, his eyes dead and clouded. Alex snatched his hand away just in time to avoid Harbaugh's teeth.
“It seems as though our sheriff is under the weather.” Sinder stepped back, toward the doorway. “In fact, he died in the courtyard, hours ago.” He smiled a sickening grin.
Josh raised his rifle and fired at the chemistry teacher. The shot whipped by Sinder's ear. He cringed and hurried through the door.
Alex had one hand clamped around Harbaugh's throat. “Christ, get this sumbitch off me!” Billings and Tom rushed forward to help.
They threw the sheriff to the floor. His gun hand freed, Alex ended Harbaugh with one well-placed shot, leaving a splattered trail of brains on the basketball court. While the others stood in horror, gathered around Harbaugh's corpse, Alex hurried after Sinder—
—and ran headlong into a wall of zombies.
The dead choked the hallway, packed in like rush hour on a subway car.
“Oops, someone left the door open!” Sinder yelled as he disappeared into the sea of zombies. The sound of his laughter trailed off in the echoing hallway.
Alex emptied his pistol and went for his spare magazine. Billings and Tom stepped forward, each of them aiming one of the AR-15s. They emptied their rifles into the massed dead.
Josh hung back in the gymnasium and ejected the empty magazine from his rifle. He fumbled a box of bullets open, jamming rounds into the magazine.
Blood and gore sprayed the walls of the hallway, coating the rows of lockers, the DARE posters, the drinking fountain, and the trophy case. Gun smoke hung thick in the hallway, and the acrid smell mixed with the tang of blood. Zombies fell by the dozen, their heads in every conceivable state of destruction—fractured, shattered, distorted and exploded by high-velocity rifle rounds, blood spraying, eyes dangling and brains bulging.
Their rifles ran dry. Still, the undead horde continued.
“Christ,” said Tom, backing further into the gym.
“We can't keep this up,” said Rachael, “There's too many of them.”
Alex took a moment to ponder the situation. Finally, he spat on the ground, holstered his smoking pistol, and drew the sword that hung at his side. “I think y'all better stand back.”
Despite everything, Josh grinned. “Oh, shit, this is going to be badass.”
The blade danced in the light of the candles, seeming almost to be on fire itself. Alex took a two-handed grip, holding the sword up close to his body, and ran toward the zombies.
With one sweeping cut, he decapitated three of the undead. He pivoted, bringing the blade around in another smooth arc, and cut a fourth from ear to sternum before the first three hit the ground.
“I knew it!” Josh yelled. “Oh my God, fuckin' badass!”
Alex took another step forward and nonchalantly ran the tip of the sword through two zombie's skulls, skewering them like grapes on a shish kebab. He pulled the blade free and cut four more down with another stroke. Severed heads and limbs rained down like a storm. Geysers of blood erupted, splattering the basketball hoop, running in rivulets down the walls. Alex's cowboy boots splashed through the mire.
He moved out, past the doorway of the gymnasium, to where the hallway opened up into the courtyard. The light of the campfire cast an orange glow on the crowd of zombies. The blade was too fast to see, a blur, a phantom, as if it hummed and danced of its own accord. The zombies simply fell to pieces, separating along hidden seams. Guts and innards splattered on the floor. Gore and body parts stacked up until Alex had to slow down just to wade through the carnage.
Josh finished reloading his pistol's magazine. He slammed it home and jacked a round into the chamber. But instead of joining in, he ran around the long way into the empty biology room, cutting through the back room connecting the classrooms of the science wing. He exited at the far end of the courtyard and skirted around the mass of zombies, heading for the foyer.
The school's front doors hung wide open. Zombies still crowded in, staggering blindly toward Alex and the others. Josh took a deep breath and stepped forward. He walked up to can't-miss distance, practically placing the muzzle of the gun against a zombie's skull, and pulled the trigger again and again. In the bright muzzle flashes, zombies fell in heaps as bone and brains splattered across the floor.
He emptied his clip, nearly clearing the zombies away from the door, but more pushed in. Suddenly, Emily and Rachael stepped up beside him, guns in their hands. “Didn't think you were going to have all the fun, did you?” said Emily.
They all opened fire. More dead fell in piles around the door. Finally, a hole in the crowd opened just enough for Josh to dart forward and grab the doors. More zombies rushed forward as the doors swung shut. Josh fought with the door's hydraulics as it eased slowly shut. One last zombie poked his head in between the doors. Emily blasted it in the face, and it fell away. Josh slammed the doors and twisted the bolt.
Emily and Rachael kept shooting, picking off the remaining zombies, stepping to the side to keep Alex out of their line of fire. From the other end of the courtyard, Alex moved inexorably closer, cutting through the masses of zombies like a scythe, like a machine. Finally, the two met.
Alex took one last swing. Three zombies fell into pieces and tumbled to the floor. Alex stood frozen, his sword held horizontally in a two handed grip. The blade was solid red, drizzling blood. After a moment, a bit of gore fell off the light fixture and dropped with a splash to the floor. Without a word, Alex straightened up, his eyes lost in the shadow of his hat brim. He flicked the blade out to the side, and blood sprayed on the wall.
Silence descended. Over the ringing in their ears, the survivors heard only their own heavy breathing, dripping blood, and the muffled groans of dismembered zombies.
Alex stood, panting, coated from head to toe in red. “Shit,” he said.
“Shit is right,” added Rachael.
After a moment's silence, Alex said, “Well kid, if it helps any, you were right. Harbaugh got bit, he died, he turned. One more thing we got to look forward to.”
Josh said, “It doesn't help.”
Nobody else responded. Outside, on the other side of the reinforced glass, zombies gathered. Some strange intelligence glinted in their eyes. They peered i
nside, pounded on the glass, beat on the doors, their movements eerily coordinated.
As one, they spoke.
“Emily . . . Emily . . . Emily . . . my love . . . my love . . . my love . . . Come to me . . .”
Hundreds of mouths speaking with one voice, chanting, the words rolling across the crowd with a terrible echo, they stood and swayed. “Emily, my queen . . . queen . . . queen . . . I am your destiny . . . destiny . . . destiny . . . we will remake the world . . .”
Emily stood frozen in horror. Josh put an arm protectively around her shoulder, and she leaned into him.
“Don't listen,” he said. “It's going to be okay.”
“Send out the girl and you live . . . live . . . live . . . Send out Emily and you live . . .”
“Send her out . . .”
“Send her out and you live . . .”
Tom, Alex, Billings, Buck, and Rachael stood at the doorway, while Josh and Emily hung back.
Tom turned to the rest of them. Panic showed in his eyes. “We have to give him Emily,” he said.
“Tom!” said Emily.
“I'm sorry,” he responded. “I am. But somebody has to say it! It's the only way! You heard them, he'll let us live! How the hell else are we ever going to get out of this?”
“We aren't sending her out,” said Josh.
“Come on, Emily,” said Tom. “It's not like he's going to kill you. It wouldn't be that bad, right?” The rest of the survivors just stared at him. “Rachael, back me up here. It's time to make some hard decisions. Is it fair that we all die just so Emily can avoid . . . an arranged marriage?”
Rachael didn't say anything. She looked from Tom to Emily, and back to Tom again.
Josh glared at Tom.
Alex leaned against the wall, casually wiping blood from his sword with a handkerchief. “I guess I gotta remind y'all that so far, Dan Sinder's been lyin' like a no-legged dog.”
“But he isn't lying about Emily. He's in love with her! She's our ticket out of here.”
After another pause, Alex slowly shook his head. “Nah. I ain't havin' it. Sendin' her out there to that asshole, well, that's just lower than snake shit.”
“Alex is right, Tom,” said Billings. “Dan has been blowing smoke at us for . . . for years, probably. He's been planning this for two years, at least. He literally just murdered everyone in town. I can't think of any reason why he wouldn't just toss another gas tank through the window the second he got Emily out. I hate to say it, but his . . . his obsession with her is probably the only reason we're still alive. She's the only leverage we've got. Even if it wasn't a horrible thing to do, we'd be fools to hand her over.”
Emily said, “Can you all stop talking about me like I'm not here?”
Rachael spoke at last. “We . . . we can't do that. We've come this far by sticking together. I can't do it. I can't just throw her to the wolves to save my own skin.”
“That's a change,” said Buck.
“Then what the hell do you want to do?” cried Tom. “What's your big plan?”
“Actually, it's funny you should ask.” The old geology teacher smiled slightly. “There's something I want to show you all.”
Chapter Fourteen
They crowded into Mr. Billings's old classroom. Candles dripped wax onto the lab benches. All around, samples of minerals and fossils sat on old wooden shelves. The walls were lined with posters—a periodic table, a timeline of geological epochs, the evolution of the trilobite, the geology of the Sierra Nevadas.
have a great summer, mr. billings! was still scrawled on the green chalkboard in white chalk, along with a handful of childish doodles.
Billings took up his place at the head of the class. He stood behind the teacher's front table. It had a black stone counter top, a sink with a chrome faucet, and a gas outlet for Bunsen burners. On the counter sat a box made of a wooden frame skinned with a fine wire mesh.
The rest of the survivors sat in student chairs, facing the teacher.
“Everybody paying attention?” said Billings. “Okay. Before we were so rudely interrupted by Dan Sinder trying to kill us all, I was taking advantage of the quiet to do a few experiments. Science is all about exploring the unknown, and there is an awful lot we don't know. We're dealing with some extremely strange phenomena. But with hungry corpses wandering the streets and trying to eat us all, it's easy to forget about the more subtle mystery. I am, of course, referring to the fact that nothing electrical works. And I think that while we can all agree that it's important to not get eaten, perhaps this second mystery is more crucial to our survival. If we had electricity, for example, we could call for help. Or if cars worked, we could simply drive away from all this lunacy.”
Alex nodded. “Followin' you so far, Teach.”
“Good.” Mr. Billings pointed to Alex. “Gold star for the vampire hunter. Now, Buck and I were talking earlier about what the nature of this phenomenon might be. We were wracking our brains, trying to think about what kind of effect could alter the very nature of how electricity works. I mean, whatever this is, to be doing what it's doing, it has to be affecting the very movement of electrons between atoms. It's a bit mind-bending. If I spent a few months reading up on the latest advances in quantum physics, I might be able to formulate a hypothesis. But luckily, I don't think we need to go that deeply into it. After a bit of brainstorming, Buck and I concluded that there are two basic options. One, that this is an internal effect—that there is some fundamental change in the properties of the natural world. This seemed far-fetched, but I couldn't rule it out. The whole day has been rather farfetched. The second option we have to consider is that this is an external effect. That is, what if some unknown force is acting upon us from the outside, in effect some kind of . . . dampening field. Which is also far-fetched for a number of reasons, but slightly less so.”
Tom nodded. “Makes sense. I mean, as much sense as anything has made today.”
“Good. So, that being the case, I designed and performed a very simple experiment. This”—he gestured toward the wire-mesh box on the counter—“is a Faraday cage. It actually comes to us courtesy of Dan Sinder. He had this in his classroom as a demonstration of electromagnetism. Basically, it's a shielded box. This wire mesh prevents the conduction of electromagnetic waves. For example, if you put a cell phone in here, it wouldn't get a signal. If you put a radio in, it would stop playing music. Faraday cages, larger ones, are often used to shield sensitive electronics. Police even have a portable version, a sort of plastic bag, in which they can put a suspect's phone to prevent the memory from being wiped remotely.”
“John,” said Buck, “you're lecturing.”
Billings smiled. “Quite right. I apologize. Old habits die hard. I need to remember that I don't have an hour and a half I need to kill. I'll cut to the chase.”
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a yellow plastic flashlight. “We're all familiar with the problem.” He flicked the power switch on and off a few times for emphasis, to no effect. He unscrewed the cap to the flashlight and slid two D cell batteries into his hand. “This flashlight worked the last time I was here, less than a month ago. No reason why it shouldn't work now.” He put the flashlight back together again. “But clearly, it doesn't. Now watch closely.” He flicked the dead flashlight's switch to the “on” position and left it there. Next, he placed the flashlight into the Faraday cage and closed the lid.
The flashlight came to life.
Next to the candlelight, the simple D cell flashlight was blindingly bright. The audience squinted and raised their hands to their eyes.
“I'll be gol-damned,” said Alex.
Billings opened and closed the lid of the box a few times, for emphasis. The flashlight flicked on and off and on again. He pointed to Josh and said, “Mr. Easton, what can we conclude from the results of this experiment?”
Josh tapped his fingers on the desk. “That the, ah . . . that it's an outside force working on the electronics.”
�
�Another gold star. And, more importantly, what else do we now know?”
“That whatever it is, we can block it,” said Tom.
“Exactly. Gold stars all around.”
“Still, how does this help us?” said Rachael. “We can't make a call from a shielded phone. It's still blocking signals outside the box. God, I want a cigarette.”
“I never claimed I had all the answers,” said Billings, “but this is a start.”
Buck stood up and slammed his hands down onto the counter. They all jumped. “The bus!” he said.
“What?” Rachael responded.
“The bus. The school bus. It's parked in the garage out by the maintenance shed, not a hundred yards from here. I had a maintenance contract with the school. I mean, it's a thirty-year-old diesel engine. It barely has any electronics to start with. Diesel engines don't even have spark plugs. I doubt it would take much work to shield the electrical components . . . I mean, you'd need to shield the fuel pump, the starter motor . . . a few other things.”
Alex tapped his chin with one finger. “You think it's doable?”
“I'm pretty sure I could figure it out. And if we get the bus running . . .”
Rachael nodded. “Then we're out of here.”
“Wait,” said Billings, “do we have a key for the maintenance shed?”
“Shit,” said Buck.
“Don't worry none about that,” said Alex. He brandished a set of lock picks. “Another vampire hunting essential.”
“And then,” said Buck, “once we get out of town, we can just convince the army to call in an air strike on the crazy bastard.”
“I don't know if I should mention this,” said Josh, “but I saw a movie once where people tried to escape from zombies in a bus. It didn't end well.”
Alex laughed. “Yeah, maybe you oughta just keep that to yourself.”
“Sorry.”
Mr. Billings said, “So, let's work out the details. What are we going to need to make this work, and where are we going to get it? We need some kind of flexible sheets of conductive metal that we can wrap around components. Wire mesh or . . .”
Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night Page 17
