Immortal Remains 2 - 30 Days of Night

by Steve Niles

  At a bar in Fairbanks—an old Quonset hut that had been decorated, if one used the term loosely, with pelts and antlers and spat tobacco—he found an Eskimo who owned a cargo van with no windows. For the right price—right to Abner, the fiftyish, dour-faced Eskimo—Abner would let Dane ride in the back of the van, with a curtain between the cargo area and the windshield. Before they left town, they visited a yard sale and bought a pile of furniture to make the load look authentic, in case they were stopped. They took the pipeline road as far as they could, through the Brooks Range, Dane driving at night. Finally, they had to cut west on dirt roads, dodging oil and lumber trucks.

  Melting permafrost had turned some of the roads, which should have been hard packed, into soupy bogs. Twice, the van got stuck. The first time, an oil tanker came along and towed them out of the muck, but the second time they had to wait until the darkest hour of the day when Dane could get out of the van and help dig. As they waited, Abner pointed out polar bears and Arctic foxes crossing the bluish, slushy snow, curious about the immobile vehicle.

  Fifty miles shy of Barrow, they stopped until two in the morning before continuing the rest of the way into town. Abner explained that during the long days, people slept when they were tired and did their daytime business when they felt like it. Shops might be open regular business hours, but they might not. Many people tried to sleep during the “nighttime,” so it would be easiest to try to get into town then. Dane had told him that a skin condition required him to stay out of direct sunlight, and he had retracted his fangs and warmed his skin. But he couldn’t tell if Abner believed him or simply humored him. Since a skin condition wouldn’t explain why he wanted to be careful about entering Barrow, he suspected the latter.

  As long as Abner didn’t betray him, he didn’t really care. It would be while going into Barrow that Dane would be most in danger, and he hoped the bonus he had promised Abner at the end of the trip was sufficient to buy the man’s loyalty.

  It was almost four-thirty when they pulled up to the town’s main entrance. Even from the back of the van, Dane could see the guard towers scratching at low clouds and the miles of razor wire still surrounding the town.

  When Abner slowed for the gate, Dane saw armed guards and more razor wire. He had crossed international boundaries with less security. Abner slowed the van to a crawl, then stopped and cranked his window down. Dane feigned sleep on a couch in the back.

  “Welcome to Barrow,” a voice said from outside. “You moving in?”

  “Just bringing some stuff for a friend,” Abner said.

  “Uh-huh.” A pause. “Mind if I take a look in back?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Dane braced himself. The rear doors of the van swung open and he raised up on his elbows on the couch, acting as if he had just woken up. Only some of it was an act—he blinked against the thin sunlight, drawing back from it in mild pain. He just hoped the guard didn’t make him get out. Cool air blew in through the open door.

  “Hi,” he said, feigning a yawn.

  “Sorry to wake you,” the guard said. He was the size of a refrigerator, with a thick red beard and a stocking cap, and his plaid flannel shirt was open over a Felix the Cat T-shirt. He carried a small flashlight. Another guy stood behind him with a shotgun in his hands. “We gotta check everyone who comes to town.”

  “Check?”

  “Yeah, it’ll only take a sec.” The guy raised a flashlight. “Can you open your mouth?”

  Dane shrugged as if the request made no sense, but did as he was asked, confident that his fangs were fully retracted, and that some low-level hypnosis, for good measure, was also in effect. The guard shone the light into Dane’s mouth, then whistled. “Shee,” he said. “We got a good dentist here, Doc Finnegan. You oughta give her a call while you’re here, dude.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” Dane said.

  The guard shut the doors and pounded twice on the van’s exterior. “Good to go!” he shouted.

  “Thanks,” Abner said, putting it into gear. He drove a few blocks into downtown Barrow and stopped. Dane opened the back, got out.

  Most of the buildings had been rebuilt, but some were still fire-blackened husks. Blue plastic tarps protected some still under construction. He had seen a lot of those blue tarps since flying into Anchorage, as if they were doled out to Alaska residents along with their oil royalties.

  “This good?” Abner asked.

  A gold neon sign a few blocks up signaled the TOP OF THE WORLD HOTEL. A smaller one flickered VACANCY. Dane dug his backpack out of the pile of furniture in the van and shut the rear doors. “This’ll do,” he said. He fished out his wallet and peeled off the five hundred bucks he had promised Abner as a bonus. “Thanks, Abner. Now forget you ever saw me.”

  Abner grinned. “Forget what?” He got back into the van without looking back at Dane, started it, and drove away.

  Dane headed to the hotel to check in. He couldn’t help feeling a strong sense of unease.

  He was a vampire. In Barrow, of all places.

  Talk about being in the belly of the beast.…

  18

  HAVING MANAGED to fly beneath the radar and actually enter town was a feat in itself.

  Now, Dane thought, how the hell do I locate Stella Olemaun?

  It wasn’t the kind of thing you could just ask a passerby, and his acute senses were more or less useless in Alaska’s climate. The freezing cold made it impossible for him to sniff much outside a ten-yard radius.

  The town had numerous ways in and out but every single one was monitored by guards, armed with either firearms, a UV light, or both. Walking by the checkpoints made Dane nervous. He’d recently felt those UV rays and was not eager to try it again. But being seen was part of his plan. He wanted to let the guards spot him as often as possible, so when he decided to wander outside the town proper he wouldn’t be noticed—or at the very least, be less conspicuous.

  Dane had a lot of respect for the citizens of Barrow. They had faced a terrible threat and survived not once but twice. God knows how many times places like it had been hit by vampires over the centuries. The Arctic Circle had a long secret history, all the way around the top of the world, of undead invasions during the winter months of darkness.

  What the vampires did in 2001 was but one in a long series of unreported attacks.

  That’s what irritated Dane so much about that incident—the arrogance of the undead, of Marlow, in thinking they were the first. Far from it. Attacks in Alaska went back hundreds of years. Possibly out of all of the occurrences, Marlow led the stupidest of them all, because now a few more humans believed in the undead and that major error was the first step on the road toward vampire extinction.

  But right now, as Dane walked toward the outermost ridge of Barrow’s far west side, he was more concerned about his own survival. The humans who manned the checkpoint there eyed him with an unnerving glare and shined a flashlight on him.

  “You,” one of them said. “What are you doing out here?” He was a large man with a voice like gravel.

  Dane thought about running. He could disappear before they knew what hit them, but then he would only alert them to the fact that “one of them” had gotten into town. Instead, Dane stopped and looked around, feigning confusion.

  “I seem to have lost my way,” Dane said. “I’m staying at the Top of the World Hotel…am I heading in the right direction?”

  The burly man looked at his companion—both of them so bundled in outer garments that there wasn’t much difference between them besides size and shape, and smiled knowingly.

  “You’re about as far from the right direction as you can get, bud,” the slightly smaller of the two said as he pointed back the way Dane had come. “You want to be all the way that way.”

  Dane did his best to play the befuddled tourist and looked around. “Huh. How about that…”

  Both guards eased up. Not in any way a normal human could see. Dane noticed their muscles rela
xing ever so slightly beneath the bulk of their layered clothes, and their hands slackened.

  Dane decided to test the waters a bit. “So, what’s out this way then?” he said, pointing beyond them.

  The larger man lost interest in the exchange and started banging his gloved hands together to create some body heat. The smaller sentry shrugged and answered, “Nothing but a lot of frozen…nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Dane repeated as though he didn’t understand.

  “Got some hills and the ocean not too far off, but I’ll eat my hat if you can find a tree within fifteen miles thataway,” he said.

  Dane nodded, running his mind over a few facts about the previous attacks. Most of the vampires came in from the east and south. Could that possibly be where Stella was holed up? She certainly wasn’t in town. Maybe she and Eben (if he was still around) found someplace out on the frozen tundra to hide out.

  Dane thanked the checkpoint guards and headed back the way he’d come. After a hundred yards or so, he quickly looked about to make sure nobody was watching, then sprinted and jumped the fence with a graceful, almost diverlike, spin of his body, landing outside Barrow’s fenced parameter.

  He stared out into the dark horizon, took one last glance back at town, then ran as fast as he could into the darkness.

  Dane traveled in the nothingness for a while before he stopped and looked back. Barrow was still somewhat visible, with his heightened night vision.

  Suddenly, there it was—a presence around him, moving in a circle. When he tried to get a fix on who or what it was, he couldn’t.

  Then the presence divided and became two, continuing to circle.

  Dane prepared for a fight. He was sure it was his own kind. Only they could get so close without detection. If it was Stella and Eben.

  Surely they couldn’t have advanced in skill this quickly? Not that it would have been unprecedented. Some people were just born to be undead.

  The wind picked up and ice shards slammed against Dane’s face and eyes as he tried to make out the shapes moving toward him. They were human shaped, but he couldn’t make out much more than that, so he raised his hands, waiting for the attack to come.

  Then, one of the shapes stopped.

  “Dane?”

  In an instant, Dane relaxed and an uncontrollable grin spread on his face.

  It was her.

  “Stella?”

  The slender form, the way she stood with her weight thrown onto her left leg, hip cocked, the way she filled her snug jeans, the short, spiky red hair. She wore a heavy yellow cable-knit sweater, tight at the waist.

  It was Stella Olemaun.

  Then she stepped through the haze of the storm and Dane saw her face, saw the recognition dawning in her blue gray eyes, saw her lips parting, her mouth falling open, and he felt like a mule had kicked him in the gut with both feet.

  “Dane? Oh my God…. What the hell are you doing here?”

  He shrugged, trying to appear casual. Probably not succeeding very well. “It’s a long story.”

  He had always expected to find her around these parts—word had spread a while back throughout the vampire community that she and her husband Eben had returned, both as full-fledged vampires themselves, and almost single-handedly saved the town from a repeat attack.

  Until now, Dane never had the opportunity to explore if she was even up here, before that asshole Paul Norris nearly blew his head off. And ironically, that was over Stella as well.

  Yet here she was, the one and only Stella Olemaun, out in the open wilderness of Alaska.

  He hadn’t expected what seeing her would do to him.

  It had been a century and a half since he had felt anything like love, before he met Stella. He’d had to let her go. It hadn’t been easy, but dammit he thought he was coping. Now…now all that coping flew out the window. He wanted to scoop her into his arms, carry her back to the hotel.

  “Well, I always love a good story,” she finally replied.

  Why wouldn’t she come up to him, though, why was she holding back? Then he saw she ticked her head toward the other shape who had been a couple of paces behind her, circling him—one had stopped and come to her side when Dane had said her name.

  A sturdy guy with broad, sloping shoulders, he had short dark hair and a long, scarred face.

  He fixed Dane with a steady, penetrating stare.

  “Dane, huh?” the man remarked. “Eben. Eben Olemaun.”

  The husband. The man Dane had given her up for, even though—at the time—Eben had been nothing more than a box of ashes. In an incredible display of courage, Eben had turned himself in order to fight Vicente and save what was left of Barrow during that first assault, back in 2001. Although it certainly didn’t start out that way (an understatement), Dane had eventually helped Stella get Eben’s ashes back from Lilith and had told her how she might be able to use those ashes to restore Eben back to life.

  By the time he had done so, he felt that he’d never made a bigger mistake. Without those ashes, and the hope they offered, Stella might have stayed with him. Maybe. After all, he was the one who made Stella think differently about vampires, at a time when all she was interested in was carrying out all sorts of creative new ways to expose and destroy them.

  It could never have been, though. And so Dane vowed to forget about Stella. For his own sanity.

  Until now, of course.

  Eben started down the snowy sloping surface toward Dane, extending a hand. His damaged face broke into a grin. Dane put a hand out in anticipation.

  “Stella has told me all about you,” Eben said as he neared. “And I mean everything.”

  When he reached Dane, Eben balled his outstretched hand into a fist, drew it back, and swung it in a fierce uppercut that collided with Dane’s chin. Dane’s head snapped back. He almost lost his footing, but recovered just in time to see Eben following up with a left hook.

  Dane threw up a defensive arm. Eben’s fist plowed into it like a cannonball. The force of the blow knocked Dane into the snow.

  My God, is he strong.

  “You wanted to kill me?” Eben snarled. “In front of her? Get up, now’s your big chance…. I said get up!”

  Dane didn’t want this. It wasn’t the reason he came here. “Listen, Eben,” he said, getting balanced and braced for another attack. “Eben, wait!”

  “Get. Up.” The words had barely cleared Eben’s mouth when he threw himself into Dane. The two men staggered farther into the open wilderness, then Dane’s ankle wrenched beneath him and he went down, Eben on top of him, pummeling him with fast, powerful blows.

  Dane swung back, landing a couple of good shots—punches that would have killed a human. Maybe even some vampires.

  But not Eben. The more he fought, the angrier he got. The angrier he got, the stronger he became.

  As he tried to absorb the punishment raining down on his body, Dane had an epiphany of what was going on with Eben. Of course, he had to have it in human form, even before being turned, although it wouldn’t manifest until after. Or so the stories went—as with most things vampiric, nothing like a scientific study had ever been done.

  In life, according to everything Dane had heard, Eben had been a fighter. The same trait remained with him after life—legend had it that it was to make him a more powerful and fearsome combatant when fueled by rage.

  Just my luck I’m the one he’s pissed at.

  Years ago, Dane’s second bite from Marlow had increased his strength to nearly unheard-of levels, but Eben was now pounding him like he was Mike Tyson and Dane was a speed bag.

  But Eben had been dead—completely dead, burned to ashes—for a year and a half before his resurrection. Maybe that had somehow enhanced his abilities?

  Gathering every ounce of power he could, Dane threw Eben off him and managed to gain his feet, brushing the snow off himself as he did. Bruised and bloody, he knew he’d be hurting tomorrow.

  “Eben…Eben!” Stella advanced on the two of th
em. “Knock it off, Eben. You too, Dane. You’re both acting like a couple of kids.”

  “Okay with me,” Dane said, wiping blood away from his lips. “Truce?”

  Eben eyed him savagely. “Fuck off,” he said. He turned to Stella. “He probably came here looking for you, anyway.”

  “He knows that’s not possible,” Stella said.

  “Whatever.” Eben turned back to Dane with a wicked smile, long teeth bared. “Sorry pal. We don’t like bloodsuckers around here.”

  What? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. And, Eben had not only come back as a vampire, but he had obviously fed on Stella, turned her—the ultimate act of selfishness, Dane believed. Dane hadn’t turned Vanessa Steward all those years ago, after all, even though he hadn’t wanted to leave her behind.

  Then again, Stella knew what she was getting with Eben. She chose to bring him back. She accepted all possible risks in full when she did. Dane wondered what kind of a strain that put on a relationship.

  Dane would have loved to find out how Stella was handling the irony of being turned, after all the damage she caused the vampire community as a human.

  “We’re kind of a special case in Barrow,” Stella said. “Grandfathered in, you might say.”

  “I’ve heard the rumors,” Dane said. “Believe me, after last time, I wouldn’t have come back here if I thought there was any way around it.”

  “Then why did you come?” Eben asked. “And how long till you leave?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that one,” Dane replied. “I came because of Bork Dela—”

  “Who?” Eben asked, barely concealed contempt in his voice.

  “A…very nasty fellow murdering and abducting people down in Savannah. Making a big spectacle out of it. The media had even given him one of those serial killer names they love to hand out. The Headsman. I guessed it was a vampire; his actions threatened to expose us all…. And when I poked into it I found him. He said there was something in the works ‘up north’ that would make the first attack on Barrow look pretty tame.”