Emily quietly responded, “Oh.”
“That night, as he wrapped me up in a blanket, and he wiped blood off my face and carried me up toward his mansion, I remember thinking to myself, 'What a nice man. He'll take care of me.' Oh, he took care of me alright.
“Course, I wasn't the only one. He had a whole laboratory full of his experiments. You met Clarence, and you saw some of the others. But there was more, a lot more, enough for a whole freak show. But I was his favorite. I got to live upstairs in the mansion. I was his pet. The rest lived down below ground, in the cages you saw.”
“Long before Hell Night, Ashford was . . . well, he was losing touch with reality. Going farther and farther into his studies, growing his powers every day, making these strange creatures . . . not making them, really. Summoning them, tearing them through the fabric of reality from other . . . places, giving them bodies to inhabit. He'd succeeded in making his philosopher's stone—”
“Wait, philosopher's stone?” said Billings. “Is that what the ring is?”
“That's what he called it. As good a name for it as any. It's a focus. An amplifier. His powers grew every day. But the townsfolk noticed. You've probably noticed it yourself. That kind of power, that kind of work, it's . . . it's wrong. Just plain wrong. The very warp and weft of this world fights back against it. You can feel the wrongness of it in your stomach, in your bones, like you can feel a coming storm. Every day things got stranger in town. Strange creatures, strange happenings. It rained frogs once. Some poor woman gave birth to a baby with cat's eyes. All kinds of things happened. Bad omens. And all that time, Belden just kept getting stranger. He never came to town no more. He'd send his servants out to do his bidding. Strange folks, just . . . wrong somehow. No personality. Smelled like rotting meat.
“The paper said the mine strike was because of an accident. But there was more to it than that. Belden's powers brought things to those dark tunnels. Wrong things. Sometimes, when you open a door to someplace, it don't close like it's supposed to. Things get through that you didn't expect. Miners were scared. They were angry. And all the time, that madman on the hill kept sending them back down into the mines.
“I remember the night of the mining strike. Belden was furious. Up there in his high windows, he looked down on that crowd of miners, carrying their coffins to his gate. This sort of magic, this sort of work, it warps a person's mind. Belden was already halfway around the bend. When he saw those folks, he snapped. There on the library table, he laid out his old books and drew strange symbols on the floor in chalk. One of the laundry girls became his blood sacrifice. Soon enough, those dead miners jumped up and did what they did.
“That was about the end for Belden in Prosperity. He was making ready to leave town when they came for him.
“Belden probably could have killed them all, if he had his ring. But he didn't. You know why?” A satisfied smile crossed Annie's face. “Because I took it. I took it and threw it out the window, out past the fence. And then I locked his secret passages from the inside so he had nowhere to run. I sat there in the dark and listened while the mob broke in and dragged him away. I listened for a while longer while they looted the mansion. And then, nothing. It was over. Belden was gone, and I didn't know what the hell to do. I used to come out at night, wandering the empty mansion, wondering what in the hell I was going to do. I found his old books, and I educated myself as best I could. I realized that I, and all his creations, came from somewhere else, and that I could maybe go home. It all hinged on that ring. He'd poured himself into it—his power, his personality. It was his strength and his weakness. While the ring existed, his power remained. But I never could find it again.”
She paused for a moment and took another drink from her flask. “Well, I wandered that mansion until I ran out of food. After that, I starved for a bit. Then, one night, barefoot and dressed in a slip, I went into town. Prosperity in those days was a wild town. No place for a lost little girl. But I was lucky. I got found by Shirley Perkins, the owner of the Silver Strike Saloon, which you all know now as Annie's Saloon.
“Shirley was a good-hearted woman. She never asked no questions, even after she saw my ears. I'm fairly certain she guessed where I came from, but she never said a word to nobody. She gave me a place to stay and let me help out around the place, and when I'd grown up a few more years, she gave me a job with the rest of the girls working in the saloon.”
“Wait,” said Josh, blushing. “Working? Like, working girls?”
“Oh, come down off your high horse. Shirley didn't see no wrong in it. She was a whore, and it gave her a good life. She wound up owning a saloon with a dozen girls working under her. She helped me out the best she knew how. She never asked nothin' of me she hadn't done herself. And there was nothing them lonely miners asked of me that I hadn't done before, thanks to Belden Ashford. And the cruelest of them was still kinder to me than he ever was. Shirley treated me like her own daughter. She left the saloon to me in her will. It was a better life than I'd ever known.
“But I never stopped looking for that ring, for me, for my brothers and sisters down below. If we could destroy the ring, we could all go back home. Its power binds us to this world. This ain't been a bad life for me, but I've always had this naggin' feeling, like there's somewhere else I should be.
“But, I never could find that ring. I spent years looking. I knew which direction I'd thrown it. I can't throw that hard, so there was only maybe a thousand square feet where it could be. I raked and shoveled and sifted every chance I could get. I never did find it. Then, a few years on, somebody invented metal detectors, and I tried a little more. And I still didn't find it. Eventually, I just came 'round to the conclusion that I wasn't never going to find it. Maybe one of those miners picked it up and sent it home to his wife in Cornwall. Maybe it got picked up by a crow and dropped down a well. But it wasn't there anymore. I just gave up. I did what I could to keep my siblings happy and fed, and I lived out my life as best I could. I don't know exactly when I realized that I wasn't going to die like normal folk. But everything was fine and dandy until Daniel fucking Sinder started mucking around with things best left alone, until he got hold of that ring. I thought all those books were safe down there in Belden's laboratory. Nobody ever found them before. But I guess I was wrong about that, too.”
Annie shuddered. “But Ashford, as long as that ring exists, he's not gone. He's . . . infected Dan. Though I don't doubt that Dan invited him right in. If Dan found that ring and then started hearin' God's voice in his head telling him what to do, that voice probably sounded a lot like Belden Ashford.”
Alex asked, “So why didn't you tell us all this before? When we came to the saloon yesterday?”
“Because I didn't know who was responsible,” Annie chuckled. “I was pretty sure it was one of you, but I didn't know who. It's more like a smell. When these magics are at work, it's subtle, like the smell when you leave an empty cast-iron pan on a hot stove. Hard to track down, exactly. Most folks can't smell it at all. But when you do, you can't ever un-notice it. I couldn't afford to tip my hand, makin' wild accusations. Stranger, I was pretty sure it was you at first.”
Alex touched his hat brim. “Well, I surely do appreciate you not preemptively blastin' me with that shotgun.”
“So, wait,” said Josh, “it always seemed to me that you've been around forever, but I'm eighteen. You're saying that in all this time, nobody's noticed that you've been alive for a hundred and fifty years?”
Annie shrugged. “You'd be surprised how little it takes. Just a few minor magics, a few glamours, and people forget to ask that sort of question. 'It's just old Annie, she's been around forever.' Likely the same way Dan's keepin' anyone from comin' down the highway.”
“So the ring is the key to all this,” said Billings. “Josh was right.”
Josh shrugged. “It's not like a magic ring is all that original,” he said. “I mean, if somebody wrote a book these days and made a magic ring a plot devic
e, I'd say they were just being lazy. Next, you're going to tell me that we need to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom or something.”
Annie cocked her head. “Mount Doom? Is that near Bridgeport?”
“Look,” said Alex. “This is fascinating and all, but we'd better focus on Dan Sinder and his plans.”
“Assuming he's still alive,” Rachael added. “Things weren't looking so good the last time we saw him.”
“Oh, he's still alive,” said Annie, “and he's got the ring back. His creatures are back on their leash. Speaking of which, I'm seeing some new faces around town. Anybody know about that?”
“The Transcendence Festival,” said Rachael. “He apparently killed everyone there.”
“How many folks does that add up to?”
“Maybe five thousand.”
Annie swallowed. “Sweet Jesus.”
“It's a lot of zombies, yeah, but it don't really change much,” said Alex. “All we gotta do is cut the head off the snake—”
“Maybe I didn't make this part clear,” said Annie sternly. “Dan is . . . well, if you want to get technical about it, he's a necromancer. A necromancer's power is rooted in death, which means that the more folks die on his account, the more powerful he gets. And five thousand souls, that's about fifty times what Belden Ashford could claim at his peak. I don't know what that means for Dan Sinder, but it ain't good for us. I'm not rightly sure bullets are gonna stop him anymore.”
Alex finished the water bottle and set it down on the floor, then walked to the table and picked up a box of bullets. He began reloading his pistol. “Well, I ain't an expert on zombies and magic and such, but I reckon we still gotta try. Because whatever he's got planned, I don't think it's good, for us, or for anybody.”
Annie nodded. “You're right, stranger. That's what I was gettin' to before you all demanded my goddamned life story. There's something big goin' on at the old mine yard. I thought maybe y'all might want to come take a look.”
Chapter Twenty
They hiked back through the cool darkness of the brick-lined tunnels until the bricks gave way to the bare rock walls of a mine shaft that wound ever upwards.
They reached a main line where ancient iron rails ran, the trestles long since rotted away. They passed a rusted-out mine cart, still full of ore.
“This is where it happened,” said Annie, as they paused at a caved-in side tunnel. “This is the Rattlesnake mine's number six shaft. Those poor fools dug too far in the wrong direction and found some of the foul things Belden summoned up into the world. Found themselves face to face with a herd of what they could only describe as demons.” She raised the lantern, looking over the pile of rock and dirt blocking the side tunnel. Iron rails branched off from the main line and disappeared under the pile. “Imagine those poor bastards down here, fighting with picks and shovels by the light of carbide lamps, while all the horrors of that sick man's imagination came at 'em from the darkness. Fourteen dead, before they dynamited the tunnel.”
She turned away.
***
The survivors struggled to keep up with Annie as she marched relentlessly up the slope in the dark, holding her kerosene lantern high.
They rounded a corner, and a glow of daylight became visible far up ahead. Signs of modern day began to appear—beer bottles and cigarette butts, old car batteries, and graffiti.
“Hey, I recognize this,” said Josh. “This is the top of Jericho Hill, right? Kids used to come up here to get drunk, until they sealed off the entrance.”
“You got it,” said Annie. “'Cept we ain't here to get drunk, unfortunately.” She blew out the lantern, and the daylight was enough to see by. “The entrance is just up ahead. I don't think nobody is going to notice us up here, but let's keep it down, all the same.”
They reached the opening of the mine shaft, closed by a welded steel grate. Annie produced her ring of keys and opened it. They stepped out into blinding sunlight and desert heat.
They found themselves on a rock outcropping on the hills surrounding the town, high above the level of the desert plain. The little town of Prosperity stretched out to their left. Straight ahead lay Ashford Mansion, tiny in the distance, perched on the facing hillside. On the right side of the hill was the huge gravel lot and the tilting, sun-bleached buildings of the old Ashford Mine Yards. Far out past the town, the old highway led away like a line of black thread toward the horizon.
Annie pulled out a pair of binoculars—huge, ancient, German-made things—and handed them to Alex. She pointed toward the old Ashford mine. “See those trucks? Those weren't there a month ago.”
A row of a dozen semi-trucks sat parked in the gravel parking lot. Their trailer doors hung wide open.
“I've got a bad feeling about this . . .” Alex lowered the binoculars for a moment, squinting against the sun, then raised them again.
A trickle of zombies appeared, stumbling through the open chain link gates of the mine. More joined them, and then even more. Thousands of zombies flooded in. They carried scores of shiny aluminum gas tanks, like a colony of ants relocating their eggs.
“That's a lot of tanks,” said Alex. “I think I know where this is going.”
With grim choreography, the zombies, bearing their deadly cargo, climbed into the trailers of the semi-trucks.
“Good God,” said Billings. “Must be a few hundred of them per trailer.”
“Where do you think they're going?” asked Josh.
Alex replied, “My money's on Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake, maybe LA or Sacramento. Jesus, just think. Let some of those gas tanks loose on the Vegas Strip, along with a few hundred zombies to get the party started . . .”
“He's exporting the apocalypse,” Billings whispered.
The trailers were full. Zombies closed and locked each trailer door. The dead climbed into the driver's seats.
From their perch on the hill, Alex could barely hear the big diesel engines fire up. Black smoke belched from the truck's smokestacks.
“Guess we weren't the only ones who figured out how to get engines running,” said Tom.
Alex lowered the binoculars. He turned to Annie. “So, you're sure, if we destroy that ring, we stop the zombies?”
Annie nodded. “Pretty sure. At the very least, they wouldn't be smart enough to drive a truck no more.”
Down in the valley, the trucks shifted into gear and pulled out of the gravel yard.
“What's the closest city to here?”
“Vegas,” said Tom. “Maybe four hours.”
Alex nodded his head. “So, that's how long we got to stop this.”
“That's not a lot of time,” said Billings.
“It sure ain't,” said Alex.
“Well,” Annie said, “anybody got any ideas?”
Alex took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “I been thinkin'. I saw a propane dealership over in town,” he said. “If I could get back to the high school's chemistry department, or even the drug store, I could mix up some chemicals, maybe make up some kind of a bomb. Then if we got the propane truck started, we could put the explosives on it—”
Annie cut Alex off. “You say you want explosives?”
Alex turned to Annie. “Why, you got some?”
The old woman smiled wickedly. “Son, mining has been the lifeblood of this town for a hundred and fifty years. There's enough dynamite squirreled away under this place to make a second Grand Canyon. If Sheriff Harbaugh knew about half of it, he'd have evacuated the entire damned county years ago.”
Alex stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well then, that might change things. And . . . wait a danged minute. You say these whores’ tunnels run right underneath Old Main Street?”
Annie nodded. “Straight and true.”
“Well then. I think I'm havin' me an idea . . .”
Chapter Twenty-one
A single zombie shuffled alone down Main Street, in front of Rudy's diner, past Harbaugh's overturned patrol car and the roadblock and the str
ewn heaps of dead zombies. He wandered aimlessly, moaning softly, sniffing at the air.
Around the corner of Main and Old Mine, he smelled fresh meat. The zombie turned, sniffing loudly, its pale, clouded eyes searching for the source.
Two pistol shots rang out in quick succession and echoed down Main Street. Both of the zombie's knees exploded, spraying blood and bone across the pavement. The creature sprawled on the ground, unperturbed, and crawled on.
Alex Rains stepped out of the alleyway. He stood over the creature, looking down with the sun at his back. The smoking pistol hung casually in his hand. He peered down at the thing writhing at his feet. “You in there, Dan?” he said. “You listenin' to me?”
After a moment, the zombie's eyes cleared. It focused on Alex. “Yesssss . . .” it hissed.
“Well, that's real good to hear, because we gotta talk. You want your girl, right?”
“Emily . . . yesss . . .”
“Well, we got 'er. And we all come to a decision. We decided that we don't particularly feel like gettin' ate so's she can avoid a shotgun wedding. So, maybe you and me can work something out. You want to carry y'all's blushing bride away to live happily ever after, you come talk to us.”
The zombie laughed, a deep, choking laugh. “You are all foooolssss . . .”
“That's as may be,” Alex drawled. “But we think it's high time we just hashed this all out. Tell you what. Meet us at high noon on Old Main Street. Somehow that just feels right, you know? I'll bring my buddies, and you bring your buddies. We'll get this settled. That sound fair?”
“Foools, she isss miiiine . . .”
“I'll take that as a yes. See you at noon.”
Alex shot the zombie between the eyes.
Chapter Twenty-two
High noon. The sun hammered down. A heat shimmer rose from the hard-packed dirt of Old Main Street. The buildings on either side stood quiet and empty. In place of tumbleweed, a single plastic shopping bag drifted across the street. The air was eerily quiet, with not a single zombie in sight.
Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night Page 24
