Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night

by Kincade, Matt

  Sinder stared deeply into his bride's eyes. “It's been so long, Emily,” he whispered. “I'm so glad you've come to me at last.”

  “You're a monster,” said Emily. “You're deranged.”

  Sinder smiled at her. “You're scared and confused, I understand that. But you must put faith in the Lord's plan. You must put faith in me. Soon, you'll see why it has to be this way. My love, I've been given such a burden. But you are my prize, my reward! You were given unto me by God. With your support, I'll have the strength to finish my task. You shall be Naamah to my Noah. Together, we will weather the flood and rebuild humanity.”

  Emily grimaced and turned her head away.

  The priest droned on.

  Sitting at the far left side of the pew, Josh glared at Sinder. He looked over at the row of undead bridesmaids and groomsmen. They all fixated on Emily, mimicking the motions of their master.

  Sinder looked like he might start drooling along with the zombies. His hands trembled and his lip quivered. He breathed fast and shallow.

  The priest kept talking, his voice rough and nasal.

  Josh looked to his right and saw Alex, who had his head turned to the right as he scoped out the windows. Alex's katana leaned against the pew on his left side. Josh softly closed his hand around the weapon. He stood up.

  Sinder was turned away from Josh. The zombies stood transfixed, their attention focused completely on the bride. None of them reacted as Josh slowly, carefully, slid the blade out of its sheath.

  When Alex turned his head back, he saw Josh silently mounting the steps to the altar, the naked blade in his hand.

  Alex's eyes widened. He shook his head vigorously and mouthed, “No.”

  Josh paused for a moment and met Alex's eyes. He nodded his head once in response. Moving at a crawl, he took the sword in a two-handed grip. Sweat ran down his face and dripped from his nose.

  Emily saw him. Her eyes widened for one quick second. She quickly returned her focus to Sinder.

  Sinder, oblivious, beamed at his bride-to-be.

  Alex rolled his eyes with an exasperated expression. He shifted in his seat and loosened his pistol in its holster. Rachael, Billings, and Tom tensed, eying the leering undead congregation.

  One careful footstep at a time, Josh crept toward Sinder.

  The zombie priest murmured, “And do you, Daniel Sinder, take this woman to be your wedded wife?”

  Sinder swallowed. With a gleam in his eye, he breathed, “I do.”

  “And do you, Emily Carson, take this man to be your wedded husband?”

  Emily looked like she'd bitten into a rotten apple. She opened her mouth, closed it again, turned away. “I . . .”

  Behind Sinder, Josh loomed, the sword raised high. The blade caught the light from the stained-glass windows and glowed red and yellow and blue.

  Emily glanced back at Josh again.

  Sinder turned his head to follow her gaze. “What?” Too late, he saw the blade. He reflexively raised his arm to block the sword as it fell.

  Josh swung, his face twisted in rage. The blade sliced through Sinder's arm, just below the elbow. Blood gushed like a fire hose from his amputated forearm. His hand, wearing the ring with the red stone, spun through the air and tumbled down the steps.

  All hell broke loose. The zombie bridesmaids and groomsmen blinked, looking around for a second like dogs who couldn't quite comprehend being let off of their leashes. Then their blind hunger took over. They groaned and lurched forward, seeking out living flesh.

  “The ring! Get the ring!” Josh screamed. Emily went for it, but a bridesmaid lunged at her and inadvertently kicked Sinder's severed hand away.

  The dead closed in on Sinder. He reached, left handed, under his shirt and pulled out a pistol. He fumbled. The pistol fell to the floor. The priest turned towards him, and Sinder collapsed to the floor with the zombie on top of him. Sinder brought his left hand up to grasp the priest's throat. He screamed as he pushed the zombie away with his fresh stump. His severed arm gushed blood onto the zombie and onto Sinder's face, soaking his shirt and the floor beneath him.

  Josh raised the sword for another swing at Sinder. An undead groomsman lurched toward him, and he swung at the zombie instead. He chopped a ragged slice from the top of the zombie's head. The groomsman toppled to the floor. More of them lurched toward Josh, but he barely noticed. On the other side of the altar, more bridesmaids headed for Emily. She screamed and pushed the closest one away.

  Josh ran toward Emily, oblivious of the groomsman closing in on him from the side. Alex aimed his pistol and shot the groomsman in the head. Josh screamed and drove the point of the sword into a bridesmaid's eye.

  Emily scrambled for her pistol. Rachael pulled her gun, aimed at an advancing zombie, and pulled the trigger. It clicked. She swore, pulled the slide back, and tried again. The gun boomed and sprayed zombie brains across the dais as the thing reached for her. Its dead body crashed down at her feet.

  Outside, released from the control of their master, thousands of zombies pounded on the door, howling and moaning, performing a horrific shadow-play against the stained-glass windows.

  One of the groomsmen, a Transcendence Festival attendee wearing an i ♥ las vegas T-shirt, found Sinder's severed arm. He knelt down on the floor and began contentedly stripping the appendage of flesh. The ruby ring disappeared, along with Sinder's fingers, down the zombie's throat.

  Sinder disappeared under a pile of zombies.

  The stained-glass windows shattered. Zombies poured in through the windows, sprawled on the floor, and crawled toward the tiny knot of survivors. The front doors splintered, and zombies poured into the center aisle.

  “The back door,” said Billings. “Go for the mansion!”

  “Good enough,” said Alex. He fired a short burst from his AR-15 to clear a pathway to the back door. They retreated toward the door, packed shoulder to shoulder, barely keeping up with the advancing tide of undead.

  The zombies still poured in through the main doors.

  Alex flung the rear door open and turned, firing into the mass of zombies as the rest of the survivors escaped through the door. At last, he slipped through himself and shut the door.

  Immediately, the flimsy wood cracked and splintered.

  “Go!” screamed Alex, as he fired a few rounds through the door.

  They sprinted across the old gardens, past a scattered crowd of zombies that turned toward them like flowers turning toward the sun. They reached the back door of the mansion. Alex shot the lock off the door and they entered a dark, wood-paneled hallway with an ornate, plastered ceiling, well-worn brocade carpet, and brass oil lamp sconces on the walls.

  Alex braced the broken door shut with a chair. They reached the end of the hallway and knocked over a velvet rope separating the hallway from the rest of the mansion.

  They found themselves in a parlor with a brick fireplace, leather sitting chairs, and tall bookshelves full of leather bound books. A taxidermied stag's head on the wall looked out over the room. A grand piano sat on a raised platform next to a picture window, overlooking the town.

  The door gave way and zombies spilled into the hallway, tripping over each other in their haste, piling up in the hall. The survivors fired into the narrow opening. The air turned red, choked with gun smoke and a fine mist of blood.

  Alex pulled a bookshelf over, partially blocking the hallway. He turned to Josh. “Kid, that was a shitty plan.”

  “Jeeze, you think?” said Josh. “My plan was to get the ring. I thought maybe the ring was, you know, what made them zombies. I thought if Mr. Sinder didn't have it, maybe things would get better.”

  One zombie got over the bookcase and lunged toward them. Alex blasted it between the eyes, and it keeled over backward.

  Billings said, “At the least, I think you've validated your theory about the ring. But I'm not sure if this is an improvement.”

  “Me either,” said Josh.

  The zombies spilled into t
he parlor and stumbled over the fallen bookcase.

  The survivors retreated down yet another hall, backing up, firing all the while.

  Rachael ran out of bullets. Then Emily. Then Billings.

  Alex fired his last bullet. “Kid, I think you better gimme the sword,” he said. Josh handed him the weapon.

  They backed through another doorway. Too late, they realized it was a dead end. They were in a massive library. The bookshelves reached up two stories, the top accessible only by wooden ladders that slid around the room on tracks. In the middle of the room was a great battleship of a table, made of solid oak.

  “End of the line,” said Rachael. “Shit.”

  Tom fired until his pistol ran dry. Alex kept hacking zombies as they came through the door until the doorway was clogged with bodies and parts of bodies. Still, Alex cut at them, losing ground inch by inch as the zombies climbed over the mounds of their fallen dead to be cut down in turn. The bodies spilled over the oak table. The smell of blood and rancid meat permeated the air. The five survivors crowded further and further toward the back of the room.

  Tom picked up a heavy brass candlestick from the table and swung wildly at the zombies. One of them seized his hand. Two of Tom's fingers and part of his hand disappeared into the zombie's mouth. He screamed as the thing bit through flesh and bone, tearing away cartilage and tendons. Tom staggered back, staring in horror at the blood spurting from his mutilated hand.

  Alex didn't have room to swing the sword anymore. He resorted to shorter and shorter thrusts, driving the sword point through dead eyes and into gaping mouths. Still, the wall of zombies closed in. They retreated until their backs were up against the bookcases.

  The rapid crack of rifle fire split the air, and four zombies' heads exploded, one after another. The survivors cringed, realizing where the sound had come from, and turned around.

  A section of bookcase had slid away on hidden rails, revealing a secret passageway.

  Annie stood there, a smoking lever-action rifle in her hands. She wore a fringed buckskin jacket over her flannel shirt. A kerosene lantern hung from a nail next to her, illuminating a brick-walled passageway that trailed off into darkness.

  The old woman fired three more times, and three more zombies fell. “Well?” she said, looking the survivors over. “Are y'all coming, or you just gonna stand there and look stupid?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sinder screamed. Spears of agony lanced up his arm as he held the zombie priest back with the severed stump of his right hand. He flailed around, searching frantically for . . . anything. At last, he dug a ballpoint pen from his pocket. With another scream, he drove the point of the pen into the priest's eye. The point penetrated an inch. Sinder slammed his fist against the pen, and it disappeared into the wound. Blood poured from the priest's eyes and nose. The zombie went limp. Sinder rolled the corpse off of himself and stood up, only to be bowled over by another zombie. He scrambled for his discarded pistol.

  Teeth sank into his ankle. He screamed again, in anger as much as pain, even as his hand closed around the pistol. He blasted the zombie from point-blank range and shook his ankle free from the dead jaws. Sinder scrambled backward, behind the altar, as more and more of the creatures closed in on him.

  He fired until the gun ran dry, then tossed it away. “Concentrate,” he said to himself. He raised his remaining good hand, his face set in a determined mask, and squeezed his fist. He muttered a single word in a long-forgotten language, and the ten zombies closest to him collapsed, blood pouring from their noses and ears.

  He limped over and fell through the broken stained-glass window. All around, the dead stumbled through the garden grounds. They noticed Sinder and shuffled his way. Squeezing his bloody stump with his good hand, he ran, dodging around advancing zombies, dribbling a trail of blood all along the brick walkway. He stumbled into a gardener's shed and slammed the solid wood door shut, then braced it with a wheelbarrow.

  Zombies slammed against the door. The building shuddered, but the door held.

  A dusty, crusted roll of duct tape lay on a wooden shelf. Sinder picked it up, pulled the tape loose with his teeth, and grimaced as he wrapped it tightly around his severed forearm. The flow of blood slowed to a trickle.

  After a moment, Sinder stood and looked around the garden shed. The place had a dirt floor. Terra cotta pots lined one wall, stacked on rough wooden shelves. Fertilizer bags were piled on the ground under the pots. Coils of cracked, green watering hose lay in the corner next to plastic buckets, a wheelbarrow, and, against the far wall, a tool rack. Sinder's eyes traveled over the rusted utensils—a shovel, a rake . . .

  A machete, with a rusted blade and a duct-tape-wrapped handle.

  His eyes gleamed as he picked up the machete and hefted it in his hand. He smiled evilly.

  “Thy will be done.”

  ***

  The bookcase door slid shut. Hidden locks engaged with a mechanical click. The brick-lined tunnel was bathed in darkness, lit only by Annie's kerosene lantern.

  Before anyone could ask a question, Annie was off again, hurrying down the tunnel. “Come on, that door is pretty strong, but I don't want to test it.”

  “Hey, wait a sec,” said Alex. “How in the hell did you know about that? How did you know where to find us?”

  “Where are we going?” asked Emily, as she ran her hand along the brickwork of the tunnel wall.

  “Away from the zombies,” said Annie. “That's all that matters, for now. Old Belden had more secret passageways in this mansion than you can imagine. This hill's got more tunnels than a prairie dog's nest.”

  “How did you even know about all of this? How did you know where we were?” said Josh.

  “Y'all keep flappin' your lips at me and you're gonna get left behind. I'll say my piece when I'm ready to and not a second before. We ain't out of the woods yet, and there's things in these tunnels you might not want to meet by yourselves. So keep your mouths shut and your eyes open, and keep walking.”

  ***

  Sinder sat on the dirt floor of the garden shed, leaning against the shelf full of garden chemicals, and stared into the middle distance. The machete sat in his lap. He tapped it thoughtfully against his knee for a few minutes, listening to the zombies outside growl and scratch at the door. Eventually, the zombies lost interest. Sinder sat perfectly still. He pondered his missing arm and muttered, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.'”

  The chemistry teacher closed his eyes for several minutes, deep in concentration. Finally, his eyes snapped open. He stood and walked over to the dirty old windows of the garden shed, scrubbed the grime away from one small pane, then peered out into the garden. A wisp of smoke escaped from the corners of his eyes.

  A zombie wearing an i ♥ las vegas T-shirt stumbled through the dry bed that used to be a reflection pool.

  Sinder pulled the wheelbarrow away and quietly swung the door open. He picked up the machete and walked out into the garden. He stepped purposefully toward the zombie in the Vegas T-shirt. Vegas noticed him and turned his way. The others noticed him as well. They moaned ravenously and lumbered toward Sinder.

  He ignored the rest of them and made a beeline for Vegas. The zombie reached out, and Sinder swung the machete in an overhead chop. The blade buried itself in the zombie's skull. Vegas dropped like a sack of mud.

  The rest of them closed in on Sinder. They drooled and gnashed their teeth, lurching closer, the circle of zombies around him tightening like a noose. Sinder ignored the rest and rolled the corpse of Vegas over with his foot. He swung again and split the corpse's belly open. A rancid, putrid reek escaped, the smell of day old roadkill, bloated in the summer sun. Sinder knelt down and plunged his hand into the wound.

  Grimacing, Sinder fished blindly through cold, wet, slimy entrails, pulling ropes of intestines out of the way.

  A zombie
grabbed Sinder's hair and pulled him back. Another seized his shoulder.

  Sinder's hand found something small and round and hard. He closed his fingers around it. The zombies all around him jerked like they'd received an electrical shock. They staggered back.

  Sinder held up the ring, his hand coated in blood to the elbow. He stood up and clumsily slid the ring onto his finger one-handed.

  As an afterthought, he swung the machete again and removed the zombie's right arm below the elbow. As his zombies stood like soldiers at attention, Sinder picked up the arm and limped toward Ashford Mansion.

  ***

  Annie held the kerosene lantern up high and led them down the brick-lined tunnel with a dirt floor, their footfalls soft on the dirt floor. The sound of zombies grew ever softer. The six survivors followed her as the path turned into a rusted, circular, iron staircase, diving deep into the earth. Empty candle sconces jutted from the walls.

  Tom clutched at his ruined hand, holding a bandanna tightly against the stumps, dribbling blood along the floor. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Kid,” said Alex, “I really wish you woulda run that plan by me, first.”

  “It just kind of happened,” said Josh. “All of a sudden, nobody was paying attention to me, and the sword was right there. When I realized that the zombies had something to do with the ring—”

  Annie stopped so abruptly that Rachael ran into her.

  The old woman spun around and held the lantern up to Josh's face. She glared at him with such intensity that he flinched. “What ring?” she growled.

  “It . . . Mr. Sinder had a ring. It seemed like it had . . . I don't know. It seemed like he was controlling the zombies with it.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It was gold, sort of old and fancy looking, with a big red stone. It looked kind of gaudy, like costume jewelry.”