“As always, may your night be bountiful.”
A little after sundown, Sister Carole removed the potassium chlorate crystals from the oven. She poured them into a bowl and then gently, carefully, began to grind them down to a fine powder. This was the touchiest part of the process. A little too much friction, a sudden shock, and the bowl would blow up in her face.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Carole. Sure, and you’ll be thinking that would solve all your problems. Well, it won’t, Carole. It will merely start your REAL problems! It will send you straight to HELL!
Sister Carole made no reply as she continued the grinding. When the powder was sifted through a 400 mesh, she spread it onto the bottom of the pan again and placed it back in the oven to remove the last trace of moisture. While that was heating she began melting equal parts of wax and Vaseline, mixing them in a small Pyrex bowl.
When the wax and Vaseline had reached a uniform consistency she dissolved the mix into some camp stove gasoline. Then she removed the potassium chlorate powder from the oven and stirred in three per cent aluminum powder to enhance the flash effect. Then she poured the Vaseline-wax-gasoline solution over the powder. She slipped on rubber gloves and began stirring and kneading everything together until she had a uniform, gooey mess. This went on the windowsill to cool and to speed the evaporation of the gasoline.
Then she went to the bedroom. Soon it would be time to go out and she had to dress appropriately. She stripped to her underwear and laid out the tight black skirt and red blouse she’d lifted from the shattered show window of that deserted shop down on Clifton Avenue. Then she began squeezing into a fresh pair of black pantyhose.
You’re getting into THOSE clothes again, are you? You look cheap, Carole! You look like a WHORE!
That’s the whole idea, she thought.
Al walked home. He could have driven but he liked to keep a low profile. He didn’t care to have too many survivors knowing he was a cowboy. Not that there were all that many people left running around free, but until they caught up with the guys who were behind the cowboy killings, he’d play it safe. Which was why he’d removed his earring tonight, and why he lived alone.
Well, one of the reasons he lived alone.
Stan, Artie, and Kenny lived together in one of the big mansions off Hope Road. They liked to brag that one of the Mets used to live there. Big deal. Al spent all day with those guys. He couldn’t see spending all night too. They were okay, but enough was enough already. He’d taken over a modest little ranch that gave him everything he needed.
Except maybe some electricity. The other three were always yapping about the generator in their place. Maybe Al would get one. Candles and kerosene lamps were a drag.
He looked up. At least there was a moon out tonight. Almost full. Amazing how dark a residential street could be when there was no traffic, no streetlights. At least he had his flashlight, but he held that in reserve. Batteries were like gold.
He’d just turned onto his block when he heard the voice. A woman’s voice.
“Hey, mister.”
He jammed his hand in his pocket and found his earring, ready to flash it if the owner of the voice turned out to be one of the bloodsuckers, and ready to keep it hidden if it belonged to somebody looking for a new cowboy to kill.
He clicked on his flashlight and beamed it toward the voice.
A woman standing in the bushes. Not undead. Maybe thirty, and not bad looking. He played the light up and down her. Short dark hair, lots of eye makeup, a red sweater tight over decent-sized boobs, a short black skirt very tight over black stockings. Despite the warning bells going off in his brain, Al felt a stirring in his groin.
“Who’re you?”
She smiled. No, not bad looking at all.
“My name’s Carol,” she said. “You got any food?”
“I got a little. Not much.”
Actually, he had a lot of food, but he didn’t want her to know that. Food was scarce, worth more than batteries, and the vampires made sure their cowboys always had plenty of it.
“Can you spare any?”
“I might be able to help you out some. Depends on how many mouths we’re talking about.”
“Just me and my kid.”
The words jumped out before he could stop them: “You’ve got a kid?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “She’s only four. She don’t eat much.”
A four-year old. Two kids in one day. Almost too good to be true. The whole scenario started playing out in his mind. She could move in with him. If she treated him right, they could play house for a while. If she gave him any trouble she and her brat would become gifts to Gregor. That was where they were going to wind up anyway, but no reason Al couldn’t get some use out of her before she became some bloodsucker’s meal.
And maybe he’d get real lucky. Maybe she’d get pregnant before he turned her in.
“Well . . . all right,” he said, trying to sound reluctant. “Bring her out where I can see her.”
“She’s home asleep.”
“Alone?” Al felt a surge of anger. He already considered that kid his property. He didn’t want any bloodsucker sneaking in and robbing him of what was rightfully his. “What if—?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got her surrounded by crosses.”
“Still, you never know. We’d better take her along to my place where she’ll be safe.”
Did that sound sufficiently concerned?
“You must be a good man,” she said softly.
“Oh, I’m the best,” he said. And I’ve got this friend behind my fly who’s just dying to meet you.
He followed her back to the corner and around to the middle of the next block to an old two-storey colonial set back among some tall oaks on an overgrown lot. He nodded with growing excitement when he saw a child’s red wagon parked against the front steps.
“You live here? Hell, I must’ve passed this place a couple of times already today.”
“Really?” she said. “I usually stay hidden in the basement.”
“Good thinking.”
He followed her up the steps and through the front door. Inside there were candles burning all over the place, but the heavy drapes hid them from outside.
“Lynn’s sleeping upstairs,” she said. “I’ll just run up and bring her down.”
Al watched her black-stockinged legs hungrily as she bounded up the bare wooden stairway, taking the steps two at a time. He couldn’t wait to get her home.
And then it hit him: why wait till they got to his place? She had to have a bed up there. What was he doing standing around here when he could be upstairs getting himself a preview of what was to come?
“Yoo-hoo,” he said softly as he put his foot on the first step. “Here comes Daddy.”
But the first step wasn’t wood. Wasn’t even a step. His foot went right through it, as if it was made of cardboard. As Al looked down in shock he saw that it was made of cardboard—painted cardboard. His brain was just forming the question Why? when a sudden blast of pain like he’d never known in his life shot up his leg from just above his ankle.
Screaming, he lunged back, away from the false step, but the movement tripled his agony. He clung to the newel-post like a drunk, weeping and moaning for God knew how long, until the pain eased for a second. Then slowly, gingerly, accompanied by the metallic clanking of uncoiling chain links, he lifted his leg out of the false tread.
Al let loose a stream of curses through his pain-clenched teeth when he saw the bear trap attached to his leg. Its sharp, massive steel teeth had embedded themselves in the flesh of his lower leg.
But fear began to worm through the all-enveloping haze of his agony.
The bitch set me up!
Stan had wanted to find the guys who were killing the cowboys. But now Al had, and he was scared shitless. What a dumb-ass he was. Baited by a broad—the oldest trick in the book.
Gotta get outta here!
He lunged for the door
but the chain caught and brought him up short with a blinding blaze of agony so intense that the scream it elicited damn near shredded his vocal cords. He toppled to the floor and lay there moaning and whimpering until the pain became bearable again.
Where were they? Where were the rest of the cowboy killers? Upstairs, laughing as they listened to him howl like a scared kitten? Waiting until he’d exhausted himself so he’d be easy-pickings?
He’d show them.
Al pulled himself to a sitting position and reached for the trap. He tried to spread its jaws but they were locked tight on his leg. He wrapped his hand around the chain and tried to yank it free from where it was fastened below but it wouldn’t budge.
Panic began to grip him now. Its icy fingers were tightening on his throat when he heard a sound on the stairs. He looked up and saw her.
A nun.
He blinked and looked again
Still a nun. He squinted and saw that it was the broad who’d led him in here. She was wearing a bulky sweater and loose slacks, and all the makeup had been scrubbed off her face, but he knew she was a nun by the wimple she wore—a white band around her head with a black veil trailing behind.
And suddenly, amid the pain and panic, Al was back in grammar school, back in Our Lady of Sorrows in Camden, before he got expelled, and Sister Margaret was coming at him with her ruler, only this nun was a lot younger than Sister Margaret, and that was no ruler she was carrying, that was a baseball bat—an aluminum baseball bat.
He looked around. Nobody else, just him and the nun.
“Where’s the rest of you?”
“Rest?” she said.
“Yeah. The others in your gang? Where are they?”
“There’s only me.”
She was lying. She had to be. One crazy nun killing all those cowboys? No way! But still he had to get out of here. He tried to crawl across the floor but the chain wouldn’t let him.
“You’re makin’ a mistake!” he cried. “I ain’t one o’ them!”
“Oh, yes you are,” she said, coming down the stairs.
“No. Really. See?” He touched his right ear lobe. “No earring.”
“Maybe not now, but you had one earlier.” She stepped over the gaping opening where the phony tread had been and moved to his left.
“When? When?”
“When you drove by earlier today. You told me so yourself.”
“I lied!”
“No you didn’t. But I lied. I wasn’t in the basement. I was watching through the window. I saw you and your three friends in that car.” Her voice suddenly became cold and brittle and sharp as a straight razor. “I saw that poor woman and child you had with you. Where are they now? What did you do with them?”
She was talking through her teeth now, and the look in her eyes, the strained pallor of her face frightened the hell out of Al. He wrapped his arms around his head as she stepped closer with the bat.
“Please!” he wailed.
“What did you do with them?”
“Nothing!”
“Lie!”
She swung the bat, but not at his head. Instead she slammed it with a heavy metallic clank against the jaws of the trap. As he screamed with the renewed agony and as his hands automatically reached for his injured leg, Al realized that she must have done this sort of thing before. Because now his head was completely unprotected and she was already into a second swing. And this one was aimed much higher.
You’ve done it again, Carole! AGAIN! I know they’re a bad lot, but look what you’ve DONE!
Sister Carole looked down at the unconscious man with the bleeding head and trapped, lacerated leg and she sobbed.
“I know,” she said aloud.
She was so tired. She’d have liked nothing better now than to sit down and cry herself to sleep. But she couldn’t spare the time. Every moment counted now.
She tucked her feelings—her mercy, her compassion—into the deepest, darkest pocket of her being where she couldn’t see or hear them, and got to work.
The first thing she did was tie the cowboy’s hands good and tight behind his back. Then she got a washcloth from the downstairs bathroom, stuffed it in his mouth, and secured it with a tie of rope around his head. That done, she grabbed the crowbar and the short length of two by four from where she kept them on the floor of the hall closet; she used the bar to pry open the jaws of the bear trap and wedged the two by four between them to keep them open. Then she worked the cowboy’s leg free. He groaned a couple of times during the process but he never came to.
She bound his legs tightly together, then grabbed the throw rug he lay upon and dragged him and the rug out to the front porch and down the steps to the red wagon she’d left there. She rolled him off the bottom step into the wagon bed and tied him in place. Then she slipped her arms into her knapsack loaded with all her necessary equipment and she was ready to go. She grabbed the wagon’s handle and pulled it down the walk, down the driveway apron and onto the asphalt. From there on it was smooth rolling.
Sister Carole knew just where she was going. She had the spot all picked out.
She was going to try something a little different tonight.
Al screamed and sobbed against the gag. If he could just talk to her he knew he could change her mind. But he couldn’t get a word past the cloth jammed against his tongue.
And he didn’t have long. She had him upside down, strung up by his feet, swaying in the breeze from one of the climbing spikes on a utility pole, and he knew what was coming next. So he pleaded with his eyes, with his soul. He tried mental telepathy.
Sister, sister, sister, don’t do this! I’m a Catholic! My mother prayed for me every day and it didn’t help, but I’ll change now, I promise! I swear on a stack of fucking Bibles I’ll be a good boy from now on if you’ll just let me go this time.
Then he saw her face in the moonlight and realized with a final icy shock that he truly was a goner. Even if he could make her hear him, nothing he could say was going to change this lady’s mind. The eyes were empty. No one was home. The bitch was on autopilot.
When he saw the glimmer of the straight razor as it glided above his throat, there was nothing left to do but wet himself.
When Sister Carole finished vomiting, she sat on the curb and allowed herself a brief cry.
Go ahead, Carole. Cry your crocodile tears. A fat lot of good it’ll do you when Judgment Day comes. No good at all. What’ll you say then, Carole? How will you explain THIS?
She dragged herself to her feet. She had two more things to do. One of them involved touching the fresh corpse. The second was simpler: starting a fire to attract the other cowboys and their masters.
Gregor watched as Cowboy Stan ran in circles around his dead friend’s swaying, upended corpse.
“It’s Al! The bastards got Al! I’ll kill them all! I’ll tear them to pieces!”
Gregor wished somebody would do just that. He’d heard about these deaths but this was the first he’d seen—an obscene parody of the bloodletting rituals his night-brothers performed on the cattle. This was acutely embarrassing, especially with the Master newly arrived from New York.
“Show yourselves!” Stan screamed into the darkness. “Come out and fight like men!”
“Someone cut him down,” Gregor said.
One of the other two from Cowboy Stan’s pack finished stamping out the brush fire at the base of the utility pole and began to climb.
“Let him down easy, Kenny!” Stan yelled.
“The only thing I can do is cut the rope,” the one on the pole called back.
“Dammit, Al was one of us! Cut it slow and I’ll ease him down. C’mere, Artie, and help me.”
The one called Artie came over and together they caught their friend’s body as it slumped earthward and—
The flash was noonday bright, the blast deafening as the shock wave knocked Gregor to the ground. His first instinct was to leap to his feet again, but he realized he couldn’t see. The bright flash h
ad fogged his night vision with a purple, amoebic after-image. He lay quiet until he could see again, then rose to a standing position.
He heard a wailing sound. The cowboy who had been on the pole lay somewhere in the bushes, screaming about his back, but the other three—the two living ones and the murdered one—were nowhere to be seen. Gregor began to brush off his clothes as he stepped forward, then froze. He was wet, covered with blood and torn flesh. The entire street was wet and littered with bits of bone, muscle, skin, and fingernail-size pieces of internal organs. There was no telling what had belonged to whom.
Gregor shuddered at the prospect of explaining this to the Master.
Tonight’s murder of Al had been embarrassing enough by itself. But this . . . this was humiliating.
Sister Carole saw the flash and heard the explosion through the window over the sink in the darkened kitchen of the Bennett house. No joy, no elation. This wasn’t fun. But she did find a certain grim satisfaction in learning that her potassium chlorate plastique worked.
The gasoline had evaporated from the latest batch and she was working with that now. The moon provided sufficient illumination for the final stage. Once she had the right amount measured out, she didn’t need much light to pack the plastique into soup cans. All she had to do was make sure she maintained a loading density of 1.3 G./c.c. Then she stuck a 3 blasting cap in the end of each cylinder and dipped it into the pot of melted wax she had on the stove. And that did it. She now had waterproof block charges with a detonation velocity of about 3300 M/second, comparable to forty per cent ammonia dynamite.
“All right,” she said aloud to the night through her kitchen window. “You’ve made my life a living hell. Now it’s your time to be afraid.”
The Master’s eyes glowed redly in the Stygian gloom of the mausoleum. Even among the Old Line of the undead, the Master was fearsome-looking with his leonine mane, his thick moustache, jutting nose, and aggressive chin. But his eyes seemed to burn with an inner fire when he was angry.
In the Footsteps of Dracula Page 67
