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

by Kincade, Matt

  Alex appeared first. Cool as the underside of a pillow, his pistol hanging at his side in its leather holster, the katana riding on the opposite hip, he strode up to the T-intersection that marked the beginning of Old Main Street. The sun, directly above, hid his face in the shade of his hat brim and made his shadow no more than a dark puddle at his feet. He turned right, so the old McCormick Hotel was at his back, and looked down Old Main Street.

  Billings, Tom, Rachael, Emily, and Josh followed behind. Emily's hands were behind her back. Josh and Billings held her arms on either side. She struggled half-heartedly.

  They stood in a row beside Alex as he coolly surveyed the empty street before them. “You here, Dan?”

  “Maybe he changed his mind,” said Rachael.

  “This is just like the part where the Fellowship of the Ring rides up to the gates of Mordor,” said Josh. Nobody responded.

  At the far end of the street, Sinder appeared. The black top hat sat cocked on his head. His right arm was bare, the sleeve of his tailcoat shredded. Just below the elbow lay a Frankenstein horror of staples and stitches. From that bloody union down, Sinder's new arm was a sickly gray-green. With it, he held a rusty machete.

  Sinder smiled. “Ah. You're here.”

  Alex nodded. “High noon, just like we agreed. No funny business, now.” He drew his pistol and pressed the barrel against Emily's head.

  They heard it first, then felt the ground tremble—the stomp of marching soldiers, the drumbeat of hundreds, thousands of feet pounding in unison.

  Behind Sinder, a row of zombies appeared at the far end of Old Main Street. And another. And another.

  Far from the shambling mob of the previous day, the zombies marched in grim lockstep, in time to some drummer only they could hear. They stretched from one side of the street to the other, filling the street, packed in tight.

  Row after row after row of the undead rounded the corner, snapping into tight formation behind Sinder, a morbid army, their synchronized footfalls shaking the ground. They filled the wide street from sidewalk to sidewalk, a wall of the dead. With perfect coordination, they stopped and stood at attention behind their master. The echoes of footfalls drifted away.

  “Well, gol-damn,” Alex drawled. “Now that's impressive. But Dan, you look like somethin' the dogs been keepin' under the porch. That arm ain't lookin' so good.”

  “What, this old thing?” Sinder held up his replacement hand. “Just a little something I threw together”—he glared at Josh—“after an unfortunate accident.”

  “It wasn't an accident,” Josh said.

  “Let's cut the shit, shall we?” said Sinder. “What are your demands?”

  Alex pulled Emily forward a few steps, the pistol still against her skull. “Here's the deal, hoss,” he said. “Just you and me, mano a mano. We leave all the guns and the swords and the zombies behind. You win, you get the girl. I win, and you pack up your toys and go home. You see that line in the dirt there?” Alex pointed to a line etched in the dusty street. “All you gotta do is step over that line, and we'll hash it out like men.”

  Sinder's lips twitched. He smirked, walking forward until the tips of his dusty oxfords fell just short of the line scratched in the dirt of Old Main Street. The zombies marched up with him, step by thundering step. Sinder's smirk turned into a smile. He giggled, then laughed, then guffawed. “Are you serious?” he managed. He spread his hands to gesture behind him. “You are, aren't you? You're completely serious. I'm the Lord and Master of Death. I'm the Right Hand of God, the Fourth Horseman, Bringer of the Apocalypse, and you're . . . you're challenging me to a fist fight?”

  Alex shrugged. “Well . . . when y'all put it like that . . .”

  Sinder's expression grew serious. “And what if I don't accept your offer?”

  Alex pressed the pistol harder against Emily's head. She cringed. “Then I put a bullet in your girl here.”

  “Hmm,” said Sinder. “Let me think about this for a moment.” He stroked his chin and tapped his foot, looking down at the ground while he pondered. At last, he looked back up at Alex and gave a smug grin. “How about . . . no. Just go ahead and shoot her.”

  “What the fuck, Dan?” said Emily, with an outraged expression.

  Alex cocked his head in confusion. “The hell you mean, no? You got a hearing problem? I'm gonna shoot your girl! I'll spray her brains all over this street. Won't be no bringin' her back from that.”

  Sinder sighed, as if getting ready to explain a concept to an exceptionally slow student. “Mister Rains, let's be real. You aren't going to kill her, and we both know it. This is all a giant bluff. First of all, you're a hero. You've got the white hat and everything. You're not going to execute some innocent girl. Besides, what then? If she's dead, you have no leverage. You'd be right back where you started, with just you and me and thousands of my undead servants waiting to tear you to pieces.”

  “I'm awful sorry you feel that way,” said Alex.

  “So,” Sinder continued, “I'll make you a counter offer. You hand her over to me, right here and right now, and you can all leave. I'll give you a working vehicle, and I'll allow you to drive to the coast. There, I'll provide you a boat. You may travel to an island where there will be an abundance of food, fresh water, and no undead. There, you can live out your natural lives in peace, which is more than the rest of the filthy sinners in this world will get.

  “And one other thing. I know you aren't going to hurt Emily. But if by some crazy chance you do, if you so much as damage one . . . single . . . hair . . . on her perfect head, then I won't just kill you.” Sinder's face twisted into an expression of cold rage. His voice trembled. “I'll make you know such agony as has never before existed in this world. I control the very gates between life and death. You'd beg for death and be denied. For centuries.”

  “Well, shit,” said Alex, with a laugh. “Can't blame a guy for trying.”

  “Indeed.” Sinder smiled again. “So. It's settled then. Just send her over to me, and we can put this whole regrettable business behind us.”

  Alex thought about it for a second. “Yeah, actually, I think maybe it's time we went with plan B.”

  Alex turned his pistol toward Sinder and emptied his clip. Seven .45 slugs hit Sinder's chest in a fraction of a second. He took a staggering step back.

  Alex dropped the magazine from his pistol and slid in a replacement.

  Sinder looked down at his chest. Seven mashed pieces of lead glowed red-hot, then dropped to the ground. He laughed deeply. The zombies mimicked him, and a chorus of laughter rippled up and down the ranks of the dead. “You idiots,” Sinder said. His eyes began to glow red, and wisps of smoke escaped his nose and mouth. “You utter fools. Do you think I'm completely stupid? If I thought for a second that there was anything you could do to hurt me, do you really think I would have showed up here to face down five armed people?”

  Alex shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, well, we was kinda hopin'.”

  “Fools,” Sinder seethed. “No mortal tools can hurt me. If I hadn't been . . . distracted, I'd never have been mauled by a petulant child with a sword.”

  “Not a big deal, though,” said Alex. “Just means we gotta go with plan C.”

  “Plan C?” Sinder laughed. “What's plan C? Spitwads? Clever insults?”

  “Thing is, I kinda figured that shooting you wasn't gonna work. But those gunshots was real handy, on account of we needed some kind of signal.”

  “Signal?” Sinder looked perplexed.

  “You know, to tell Annie to light the fuse. On the dynamite.”

  “What—”

  Alex and the rest of them hit the dirt.

  Old Main Street bulged. A deep, base rumble shook the ground. The earth cracked and the street lifted under Sinder's feet. He looked down, then back at Alex with a look of pure, burning hatred.

  Then the world came apart.

  Cases of dynamite packed into the brick tunnels under Old Main Street detonated. Old Prosperity
disintegrated like ground zero of an atom bomb strike.

  Old Main Street became a trench. The blast shredded thousands of zombies in an instant, bits of flesh and bone blasted high into the air, along with dirt and dust and gravel. A fireball rose into the noon sky.

  After a second's pause, dirt clods and brick and pieces of zombie rained down all around.

  When the dust cleared, a handful of zombies remained. They stumbled around aimlessly, dazed. A hundred-foot long, furrowed trench ran down the center of Old Main Street, littered with bricks and splintered timber, random pieces of zombies strewn throughout. Heads and arms wriggled and twitched, broken torsos dragged themselves along with broken arms.

  The echoes of the explosion rolled and rumbled through the dusty old street and across the rocky hills. Dust and dirt clods and bits of brick and timber and meat still fell out of the sky, pitter-patter.

  The street fell silent. Alex and the rest of the survivors picked themselves up, dusted off their clothes, and watched the new crater. Nothing moved, save a few crawling, dismembered zombies, moaning softly.

  “I've been accused of tryin' to solve all my problems with explosives,” said Alex, “but damned if it don't do the trick sometimes.”

  There was a noise then, a noise so odd and out of place that for a moment none of them could quite place it. Music. Elvis Presley playing “Hound Dog.” They looked around, searching for the source.

  Alex took his phone out of his pocket. It was blasting out music. “It's my ringtone,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Reckon the power's back on.” He looked at the screen and saw that the call was from Cooper. He thumbed the accept call button, then held the phone to his ear. “Howdy, Coop,” he said.

  Cooper's voice came over the line, cold and clear. “Alex, what in the everloving name of fuck did you step in out there?”

  “Kind of a long story, honestly.”

  “Shorten it.”

  Alex sighed. “Zombies.”

  A pause. “Are you shitting me?”

  “'Fraid not.”

  Another pause. “Is it under control?”

  “Yeah, that's actually a good question. Look, this is a bad time. I gotta call you back.” He ended the call.

  In the distance, they heard a car alarm wail.

  “I'll be gol-damned.” Alex muttered.

  “Well,” said Billings, walking over to the edge of the crater, “I guess that did it.” He peered down into the smoking hole in Old Main Street. “I guess Dan Sinder won't be bothering us anym—”

  Something flashed out of the smoke, catching the sun as it twirled. It hit Billings with a meaty slap. He jerked once, then turned to face them. The rusty machete protruded from his forehead like some kind of obscene horn. Blood poured from his nose. He staggered forward two steps, tried to say something, and fell face-first into the dirt.

  “Jesus!” cried Rachael.

  “Jesus?” The voice that came from the trench was like Sinder's, and yet, not. Hideously warped, wet, like tearing meat. “Let me tell you about Jesus.”

  Alex drew his pistol and stood ready.

  Dan Sinder crawled from the smoking crater that used to be Old Main Street. “Jesus was a failure,” he said. A jagged splinter of wood protruded from his side. Half of his face was charred and burnt, his cheekbone exposed. The air around him shimmered like hot asphalt. Smoke poured from his coal-glowing eyes. He held out his hand and the top hat sailed across the street and into his grasp.

  He put the hat on. “Jesus. The Christ. Son of God. Sent to save mankind. With what? With kindness? With compassion? What did it get him? Nailed to a cross. Tortured, humiliated, murdered. Like a lamb to the slaughter. Given powers of a God, the power of life and death, and what did he do? He turned the other cheek. He loved his enemies. For his naivety, he died in agony. God is love? What utter trash. God is hate. God is vengeance.”

  The survivors backed away as Sinder walked to where Billings lay, his legs still twitching. Sinder rolled Billings over with his foot, then leaned down and wrenched the machete from his skull. Blood ran down the rusty blade. With his other hand, Sinder pulled the necklace out from under his shirt. “You've broken my little spell, I see.” Sinder yanked at the necklace, snapping the cord from which it hung, and dropped it on the ground. “Not that it matters anymore. You can call whoever you'd like. It's too late to stop anything.”

  The survivors huddled together, guns ready. As they watched, zombies crawled out of the trench behind Sinder. Limping, moaning, mangled by the blast, trailing guts and broken limbs, they pressed forward. They held weapons—bricks, rebar, shards of splintered lumber studded with bent nails.

  Sinder held his arms out wide. “My power grows every minute.” Lightning darted from his fingertips and danced along the ground. “Nothing can stop me.”

  The closest zombie crawled toward the survivors. Alex coolly shot the creature between the eyes. It dropped and lay still. “Well,” he said, “I reckon we can still stop your pets.”

  Sinder only smiled wider, as a fresh wave of the living dead rose up behind him, pouring out of the trench and around their master like an oncoming tide.

  Tom stumbled as he backed away. Suddenly he grabbed Alex's arm, his eyes wild. “Hey,” he said, “the power's back on. The power's back on! Things work. Cars work!” He turned on his heels and took off running, away from the wreckage on Old Main Street.

  “Tom!” Rachael screamed. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Goddamned coward,” Alex glanced at Tom's receding back, then turned back to the advancing wave of zombies. He picked off another two, spraying blood and brains all over the dusty street.

  “Although, maybe he's got a point,” said Rachael. “This isn't looking so good. We never figured out a plan D.”

  “Where else we got to go?” asked Alex. “We stop this here and now, or there won't be no place left to run to. I'd rather die here than spend the rest of my life runnin' from zombies.”

  “He's right,” said Josh. “We've got nowhere left to run.” He turned to Emily. “Emily, if we don't make it, I just want to say that I love you.”

  Not taking her eyes off the zombies, she answered, “I know.”

  “Holy shit, was that a Star Wars quote?”

  She smirked. “Maybe.”

  “Oh my God, you're amazing.”

  Sinder still stood in the middle of the street, the old top hat perched crookedly on his head. His clenched fists sparked and smoked, and more smoke curled from his shirt collar. More and more zombies poured out of the crater in Old Main Street and formed a wall on either side of him.

  “Emily,” said Sinder, with a condescending smirk, “I must admit I'm rather disappointed in you. I'd thought you more practical than all this. You could end this all, right now, by simply making the right decision. Instead, you put everyone at risk with your own selfishness. This is destiny. You can't fight it. You're being . . . well, you're just being childish.”

  Emily stared at him for a span of heartbeats. Her jaw clenched, her nostrils flared, and her shoulders hunched. “Childish? Childish?” Emily clenched her pistol and stepped out in front of the rest of the survivors. The zombies stepped back from her. “I'm being childish?” she screamed. “You want to talk about childish? You . . . you're throwing a tantrum! That's all this is! One big temper tantrum, because you didn't get your way!” The zombies took another step back as she advanced. “Just . . . stop! For God's sake, just stop all of this! What made you think this would win me over?”

  “Don't you see, Emily?” Sinder cried. “It's not about winning you over, it's about serving God's will! I'm doing it for you! It's all for you! I'm remaking the world for you. I'm making the world pure again. I'm making it worthy of your rule. I'm making you a queen. My God, do you even know what you've done to me? You torment me, Emily. You haunt me. I'd give anything, everything, for your love. I've given you the world.”

  Emily gave a frustrated sigh. “Mr. Sinder, I can't . . . I can't.”
/>   His eyes widened feverishly. “But . . . you must. Our love was written.”

  “What love? I . . . I don't love you. I never have. I never will.”

  He sneered petulantly. “I could have done it another way, you know. I could have made you fall in love with me. It's a simple thing, with the power at my command. Next to raising an army of the dead, a love spell is nothing. But I didn't, Emily, because I knew I didn't have to. You're meant for me, and sooner or later you'll see that.”

  “No, Mr. Sinder, I'm not. And I won't.”

  Sinder stared at her. “But . . . you must. It was revealed to me. It was promised.”

  “You don't get to decide that for me! I'm not promised to anyone. I'm not some biblical chattel that can be auctioned off for twenty goats! You know what? All my life, I've done what people said I should do. I've never done what I wanted to do. And I'm done with it. I can't be with you, Dan. And it's not because you murdered the town. It's not because of the zombies, not because you're my teacher, not because any of it. It's because I don't want it. I don't want you. I'm not in love with you. And that's all that matters. My God, if you felt this way, why didn't you try just telling me, before you unleashed a zombie apocalypse? If you say you love me, if you say you care about me, how can you do this? How can you blackmail me with my friend's lives?”

  Sinder sneered. “Friends? Emily, they're using you. They're—”

  “They're using me? You . . . you're using me! I can't even . . . Mr. Sinder, no. Just, no.” She stomped her foot, her face resolute. “Look at me. Look me in the eye. I don't love you. And I'll never be with you. If you thought this would convince me, then you don't know me at all. I'm . . . not even a human being to you. I'm a fantasy. You're in love with your fantasy, not with me.” He met her eyes, and she said, “I'd rather die with my real friends.”

  Sinder stood there, frozen, a thousand different emotions playing across his face. He paced back and forth across the wide street. Finally, blind rage won out. His face darkened to purple. He snarled and pointed one hooked finger, shaking with rage, directly at Josh. “It's him, isn't it? He's the one that's done this to you. This boy. He's poisoned your mind against me.” Sinder pulled the pistol out of his waistband.