Immortal Remains 2 - 30 Days of Night

by Steve Niles

  “That sounds like a helluva long time,” Ananu said.

  “It might take us that long to cover six blocks,” Dane said. “We’ll have to stay low, stick to the shadows. I’m guessing that whoever’s out there didn’t bother to surround us, figuring that we’d have limited escape options. But I don’t know that for a fact.”

  “We should go. Like now,” Mitch said. “I’m surprised they haven’t come through that door already.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be long now. And we’d better be gone when they do, because it’s not going to take them much time to find us.” Dane glanced at Ananu. Oh hell, she was barefoot. The streets around here were uneven, filled with gravel, shards of glass, and worse. “Can you run?”

  “Look, that motherfucker did me wrong and killed Mrs. Waylons. I don’t really know who you two are, but he ran away when he knew you were comin’, so that’s good enough for me. You want me to run, I’ll run. Maybe my feet might get cut up some but compared to the shit I’ve just been through, that’s nothing.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Dane didn’t wait around for an answer, but ducked and turned to squeeze through the doorway he had created. Outside, he stood up, showing himself to the sky.

  No one shot at him, no bolts of light scorched his flesh. It was an improvement over his last trip out of the warehouse.

  Ananu came out next, followed by Mitch. When Mitch had cleared the door he started to say something, but Dane held a hand up to stop him. He listened.

  On the other side of the real door, he heard the scuff of a boot in gravel.

  “They’re coming,” he whispered. “Go, go, go!”

  Not far away a section of the chain-link fence had rusted out or been cut. Dane ran, leading the others to that and through it onto the street. They had come out a full city block away from the street that had proven so dangerous before. Looking back that way, he couldn’t see any of the people who had shot at them.

  He knew they weren’t that far away, though, and that soon they would find the hole in the wall. When they did, they would sure as hell know where to look.

  Dane motioned for Ananu and Mitch to follow and broke into a crouching run.

  On the next block he could see another warehouse, unfenced, in deep shadow because the only nearby street lamp was broken and the building had no exterior lighting of its own. Trying for a balance between quiet and speed, they reached it in less than two minutes. So far, Dane hadn’t heard any alarm raised.

  They skirted the dark building, clinging to the shadows like barnacles. When they reached its end, they saw an alley between two smaller buildings and took that because it got them off the main street.

  Now Dane did hear a commotion behind them. Shouts, running feet. Their assailants had discovered the makeshift doorway.

  “We need to step it up a notch,” Dane said. “They’ll be fanning out around the whole area in no time. At least, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Still ten minutes before AJ gets here,” Mitch reported.

  “Maybe he’ll be early.”

  Ananu stayed quiet. Dane happened to glance down at something glistening on the pavement—look at this, she’s leaving bloody footprints a Cub Scout could have followed, he thought. “I’m going to carry you, Ana,” Dane said. “Not because I don’t think you can keep up, but because I don’t want to post a neon sign showing where we’ve been.”

  She followed his gaze to the prints she’d been making. “Shit,” she said. “I didn’t think about that.”

  Dane bent forward, put his shoulder against her stomach and hoisted her in a fireman’s carry. Sometimes the strength of the undead came in handy. She gave a little squeal, then settled in, and Dane started to run like hell.

  As he did, he could make out just enough to know that their would-be assassins were on the move. The sounds had become more organized. Vehicles. He still had no way to know how many there were, but it sounded like a fair-sized force.

  And he still didn’t know who they were.

  Who would come at them with that kind of firepower and intensity? The assault had been like that of a SWAT team or a military unit. Dane had been asking questions around town, but mostly of the local undead community. Until tracking Ananu and her captor to the warehouse and fighting what he had to assume were the Headsman’s personal army of vampire thugs, he hadn’t done anything to draw the attention of authorities. He doubted Mitch had either.

  Ananu, then? Was she something more than she seemed? Over his shoulder she felt just like a young woman. Light, slender, soft where she should be. Could there be some aspect to her he didn’t know about, something that had generated such a powerful response from somebody?

  The thing about the world was that you couldn’t write off any possibility, all things being equal in paranoia. All it took was being turned into a vampire to convince you that you didn’t know everything after all.

  Mitch suddenly grabbed Dane’s left arm, breaking into his thoughts.

  “This is where we’re supposed to meet AJ,” he said. Mitch pointed to a nearby intersection. Sweat ringed the armpits of his gray T-shirt and he was breathing hard. “Mundy and Mell. I got four more minutes, by my watch.”

  “Let’s stay here in the shadows and hope they’re making a careful building-by-building search,” Dane said, standing Ananu back on her own feet. “If they’re covering ground in a hurry, they’ll be here by then.”

  Ananu sat down and started picking bits of glass and rock out of her bloody feet. Dane had to work to keep his gaze away from her, his hunger under control.

  He heard a truck growl through its gears. One of the search vehicles, he guessed. He hoped they didn’t have helicopters.

  Boots on pavement. Engines grumbling. Dane braced for the sound of gunfire, of shell casings caroming off the street. He half expected spears of light to skewer him at any moment.

  “Look!” Mitch called out, thrusting his arm toward the street. “It’s AJ!”

  A cab, white with black lettering and the words OFF DUTY glowing on its roof light, cruised up the street as if hunting for a fare. Which, in fact, it was.

  “Flag him down,” Dane said. Mitch stepped carefully into the street, checked both ways, and waved his arms. The cab drew to the side and the driver, a deeply tanned, white-haired guy in a Hawaiian shirt and puka shell choker, rolled down his window. He could have driven right out of a Jimmy Buffett song.

  “Mitch? Hey, what the hell are you up to now?”

  “Shut up, AJ,” Mitch said. “Just be ready to put the pedal down.” He opened the back door and waved Ananu and Dane in. While Ananu carefully slid in, Mitch ran around to the passenger side and climbed in front. By the time Dane had closed his door, the vehicle had started to move.

  “Fast is good,” Mitch remarked. “Faster is better.”

  “What the hell?” AJ asked again. “You in some kind of a jam?”

  “I wasn’t in a jam I wouldn’t call you to come out someplace like this and pick us up,” Mitch replied. “And I wouldn’t have called in my marker.”

  Dane didn’t know what marker he was talking about. He cracked his window, peering through the gloom and listening. AJ raced up Mundy. “Shit,” he said as he did.

  Dane swiveled in the seat, looked behind them. He saw the muzzle flashes, and only then heard the distant pop-pop-pop of the automatic weapons. He reached out and pressed Ananu’s head to her lap. “Down!” he shouted.

  Bullets struck the back of AJ’s car as it roared up the street, but he had put too much distance between them. Nothing penetrated the passenger compartment—the rear window remained intact.

  AJ made a hard, screeching left onto Hudson and then an immediate right onto Graham, followed by another left, then one more right. In a few minutes he was in a more populous area. He took the on-ramp to the Lynes Parkway about thirty miles per hour faster than the posted limit and slowed only when other traffic surrounded them.

  “Nice driving, AJ,” Mitch said.

&nb
sp; “Not surprised, are you?”

  “Well, I have seen you fart along like my grandmother on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Whatever the circumstances warrant,” AJ said. “Now will someone tell me what’s up?”

  “We can’t really do that,” Dane told him. “Not without possibly endangering your life.”

  “Hey, buddy, somebody shot at my car, all right?”

  “That’s true. Whatever your usual fare is, we’ll triple it. More. Just don’t ask any questions, please, because I don’t want to lie to you. But I can’t tell you the truth.”

  AJ thought that over for about five seconds. “Fine, whatever. Deal. Where am I taking y’all?”

  Mitch caught Dane’s eye. “We can’t go to your place,” Dane said. “Like I suggested before. Anyone who could mount an operation like that—and make sure the local cops didn’t respond—will know who you are and where you live ten minutes after they open up your car.”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said. “That’s what I was thinking. I sure love that apartment, though.” He turned to the driver. “AJ, you still got that joint in Pooler?”

  “If you’re talkin’ about my home, then yes.”

  “You haven’t burned that shack to the ground and bought a real house?”

  “It’s been too wet out,” AJ said.

  “We need to borrow it.”

  “For what?”

  “Just to lay low for a while,” Mitch said.

  Dane handed his plastic hotel room card key to Mitch. “You can stay in my room at the Hyatt, AJ,” he said. “Order all the room service you want.”

  “Well. I guess that could maybe work out,” AJ said with a small grin.

  “Good,” Mitch said. “Then take us to your place.” He settled back in his seat. Ananu did the same, closing her eyes and resting her hands on her lap, the fright still visible on her face.

  Twenty minutes later, AJ pulled into a two-track, grassy driveway beside a little cottage. Crickets trilled a running play-by-play while toads croaked color commentary. Broad-leafed trees pressed in on the cottage’s sides like insecure lovers. The front porch was screened and sagging, the paint peeling. The whole thing could have fit into Dane’s LA apartment, lot and all. A bare bulb burned over the door, inside the screened porch.

  “Home sweet home,” Mitch said, climbing out of the cab. He then went to the porch door. It screeched as he opened it. “Hope you don’t need a lot of space, Ana.”

  “I’m not used to much,” she said, eyeing the place suspiciously.

  “Perfect. Because I don’t think I even fit in the bedroom. I’ll take the couch in the living room, which if I remember right is also the dining room, library, parlor, and game room.”

  “You all make yourselves at home,” AJ said.

  “Thanks, AJ,” Ananu said.

  AJ went back to the cab’s trunk. “I got those items back here, Mitch.”

  Mitch let the screen door swing shut with a bang, with Ananu on the inside. “Let’s have a look.”

  AJ popped it open and a light flared on inside. Dane watched as AJ pulled out two Mossberg pump-action 12-gauges, handing one to Mitch.

  “Shotguns, you said. Not howitzers, right?”

  “Howitzers wouldn’t hurt, but shotguns are better than that BB gun you pack,” Dane said. Against vampires, anyway. Against whoever that was today, I’ll take the howitzer.

  “There’re some boxes of ammo in the trunk,” AJ said. His teeth glowed when he grinned, almost ultraviolet in his dark face. “Can you get ’em?”

  Dane reached in and brought out six boxes of shells, birdshot and buckshot. “Mitch, let’s start with the buck,” he said. “We can switch to bird if we have to. But if we have to, we’re probably in dire straits, and it won’t do much good.”

  “We can get more buckshot,” Mitch said.

  “I hope we don’t need it,” Dane said. “But I’d rather have it and not need it than not have it.”

  “Leave those boxes of bird in the trunk, then,” AJ said. “My wife’s brother owns the gun shop. He hates returns but he’ll do it for me…or he’ll have a damned unpleasant Thanksgiving this year.”

  10

  DANE THREW ADLER across the back of an antique English love seat. The old vampire slammed into a wheeled wooden cart holding a silver tea service and utensils flew everywhere. A creamer bounced off an oil painting by Winslow Homer, slicing a two-inch gash in the canvas.

  Dane felt bad about the Homer. He might have felt equally bad about knocking an old man around, except of course, it would take more than some rough treatment to cause Adler any real pain.

  Adler gripped the upended tea cart and braced himself, rising to his feet, the elongated, large-knuckled fingers of his right hand touching the corner of his mouth. He wore a silk smoking jacket and a for-real paisley ascot.

  Surprising vampires wasn’t easily done, but Dane had accomplished just that—waiting outside Adler’s front gate until the undead (who always seemed to congregate in his home) had left, then letting himself in the front door. Not that he would have minded taking on the whole treacherous lot of them, but he had a feeling he could inspire more cooperation one-on-one.

  “I must say, this is not the traditional response to my hospitality,” Adler said. His voice rasped like a rusted hinge. The odor of sandalwood was strong, but beneath it Dane could smell the fear Adler attempted to disguise.

  “You almost got me killed!” Dane raged. “All of you, telling me you didn’t know who the Headsman was. It’s not some outsider crashing your turf, it’s a local, with his own muscle, and you know who it is.”

  A day had passed since the attack at the warehouse, during which Mitch had driven AJ’s old Dodge pickup to the Savannah police to report his cab stolen, then stopped at Target and a pharmacy to pick up some things for the three of them, including the Plan B pill that Ananu hoped would put an end to any potential pregnancy arising from her assault. Dane had borrowed the truck to come back into Savannah after dark, with the sole purpose of confronting Adler.

  “Say that I do,” Adler replied, his lilting southern accent, more Carolina than Georgia, stretching out the final vowel. “If I didn’t tell you before, did you think that perhaps it was for your own benefit as much as mine?”

  “Not for a second. Unless you have a strange idea of what might benefit me.”

  “Turning around and going back where you came from might be a good place to begin.”

  “Not an option. Especially now.”

  “Might I ask what happened?”

  “You might,” Dane said. “I might even tell you if I knew myself. All I really know is that the Headsman has now killed two Savannah police detectives and raped a young woman.”

  Adler straightened the cart and began replacing the pieces of the tea service. “All humans. So…what concern of ours?”

  “Killing police officers is a good way to turn up the heat, for starters. You want this renegade to be the one responsible for letting humans know about our kind, once and for all?”

  “I can imagine worse scenarios.” He touched the rip in the Homer painting and shook his head sadly.

  “And vampire-on-human sexual assault? That’s okay with you, too?”

  “It’s exceedingly rare,” Adler admitted. “For good reason. I can’t imagine why any of the nosferatu would want to commit such an abomination. Sometimes I think it’s bad enough that we have to get close to them in order to feed.”

  Dane wanted to hurl the old bloodsucker against a few more walls. “So you’re intentionally covering for him.”

  “You are an unknown in all of this. You say your motives are pure, what’s ‘best for our kind.’ But many disagree with that approach, and although some of us have heard of you, Dane, none of us know you. Why ever should we give up our secrets to you?”

  “Okay, here’s the other part,” Dane said. “After we fought the Headsman’s muscle, we were attacked. UV lights, automatic weapons, a regular military-style assault fo
rce.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “I am, as you might say, an exceedingly lucky man.”

  “So it would appear.” Adler, having picked up all the fallen silver, set to organizing it with the fervor of an obsessive-compulsive. “However, I agree that what you describe is worrisome in the extreme. UV lights? Armed for us, then?”

  “Exactly,” Dane said. “There’s something going on here and I want to know what it is.” He saw Adler cast another worried look at the Homer. “Over the fireplace, the portrait, that’s John Singer Sargent, right?”

  “You have an educated eye.”

  “Plenty of spare time. The Homer can be repaired, restored, almost to new. I can make sure the Sargent can’t be if you don’t tell me what I need to know. Then maybe I’ll go to work slashing the upholstery on some of these antique chairs. Georgian, right?”

  Adler looked horrified. “You wouldn’t.”

  “It’s either that or I tear your head off and leave the rest of you in the yard for sunrise.” Dane started toward the Sargent.

  “Wait!” Adler said. “Sit…I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Dane stopped, picked one of the antique chairs, and parked himself in it. Adler came out from behind the love seat and sat down on it, crossing his legs. He clasped his hands together on his lap, prim as a schoolmarm.

  “I’m waiting,” Dane said.

  “I’m trying to decide how to begin,” Adler replied. “It isn’t something any of us talk about much. It would be like living in Sicily, I suppose, and being asked questions about the capo di tutti capi.”

  “So now you’re telling me we live under mob rule.”

  “It was a simile, Dane, that’s all. No, we are under no one’s rule. But yes, I’d be lying if I said we weren’t a little…afraid of him. More than we are of you, or at least until you came in here like a barbarian and began threatening works of surpassing beauty.”

  “I’m as in favor of beauty as the next person. But I’m also in favor of keeping my skin.”

  “As are we all.” Adler paused, looking at his own hands. Dane gave him a minute to collect his thoughts, but he was ready to get up and go after the artwork if Adler stalled any more than that.