by Hunter Blain
“Neat,” I said as I picked up the keys. “But, why was the van locked?” I looked at the driver door next to me and noticed the indicator in the up position. “What a confusing bunch,” I said out loud as I put the only key on the chain into the ignition.
After adjusting my mirrors and clicking my seatbelt (you know, for safety), I threw the van into gear and did a U-turn. Destination, Houston.
Chapter 32
Locke was going to pay. Besides revenge and the obvious, he just wasn’t a good guy at all. I bet he snaps at waiters and tells retail employees to go get their manager. I’d be doing the world a favor by sending him to the pits of Hell to roast like so many assholes before him. He had haunted me for far too long, and now I was going to return the favor.
A question tickled just behind my forehead; how had he survived for so many centuries? I had never heard of a warlock being able to extend their life for more than a few decades.
Depweg rousing in the back broke my train of thought.
“Heeeeeyyy,” I said with an elongated syllable. “How we doin’ back there, champ?”
A long, drawn out moan was his response as he pulled himself up to a seated position.
In a voice that’s usually reserved for a parent trying to lift the spirits of their sad child by telling them they made pancakes, I say, “There’s MRE’s in the cabinet, sweetie.”
Without looking back, I could hear Depweg rummaging through the cabs.
“Bottom left,” I said.
“Mmph,” was his response.
The next sound I heard was a package being torn open and consumed greedily. The noise sounded like an old 80’s zombie movie where they zoom in on the body being eaten to gross you out. I always laugh at the production quality.
We drove like that for some time, starring me as Morgan Freeman in Driving Mr. Deppyweg. In short order, Depweg had consumed all of the MRE’s. Once he was done, he made his way up to the passenger seat, waving his ass by my face as he did, and let one rip.
I thought my face was going to melt off from the heat. The ball of fire Locke had thrown was nothing compared to the unholy abomination that emanated from Depweg’s rusty starfish. Thank Lilith I didn’t need to breath oxygen or I might have thrown up. My eyes did water however.
After sitting down, Depweg looked at me and said, “Ode to Ass, by Johann Sabastian Bach.”
I turned my head toward him slowly, with a look of non-amusement. We sat in silence, looking at one another. We both burst out laughing at the same time. Unfortunately for me, the process of laughing involves air going in and out of my lungs, and I got a shot gun blast of wer-fart in my mouth and nose.
I started coughing, heartily. This only increased Depweg’s mirth and he bent over laughing. He stopped with a gasp and grabbed his side.
“That was… side splitting, wasn’t it?” I said with the taste of refried man flesh sitting on my tongue.
Depweg looked at me and tried his best to control his laughter at my dad joke.
A rain of gun fire barked in the night, startling Depweg and myself. Bullets slammed into the side of the van on the passenger side. Looking at the side mirror, I saw two similarly decked out white vans with black clad men hanging out the passenger sides of the vehicles.
The window shook violently, looking like giant rocks covered in white dust had been thrown at the window.
“The van’s bullet proof,” I said to Depweg. “Grab one of the Sig’s in back and slap in some mags, we are in for a bumpy ride.”
As Depweg moved to the back, a battering ram slammed into the passenger side. Depweg was thrown into the bench, reminding him quite abruptly about his perforated, well-done side. He cried out in pain and collapsed to his knees, clutching his wounds.
“Get up!” I yelled, looking at him in the rear-view mirror. “Now is not the time for your ‘play dead’ trick.”
Depweg moaned angrily through clenched teeth and grabbed the countertop for support.
Another ram nearly threw us off the road, forcing me to over correct back and forth until we leveled out.
“Damn, this bitch has a fat ass,” I said, fighting with the wheel. “How much do you weigh, Depweg?”
“250 with my pretty face on,” He said, slapping a magazine into an MPX and priming the bolt.
“Go for the tires and the grill,” I said while letting the van slow, watching the others match our speed. After we dropped to 50, I slammed on the gas, giving Depweg a clear target.
Depweg grabbed the handle of the back door with a smile and pulled. Nothing happened. He jiggled the handle several times in confusion.
“Oops,” I said, pressing the unlock button next to my arm. “Child safety locks, for your protection.”
With that, Depweg threw the backdoor open, though his action-smile had disappeared and was replaced with a scowl. With one hand braced against the roof and half his body protected by the other door still closed, Depweg let loose a volley of gun fire that ripped into the front of the first van. He kept the gun in control with three second bursts, allowing him to better control his aim. We were traveling at almost 100 miles per hour at this point. I was impressed at the modifications the men had done on the seemingly innocuous vans.
A few of the rounds struck home and the van started to smoke out of the hood, slightly obscuring the driver’s vision.
In front of us, a semi-trailer was coming on the opposite side of the four-lane road, and a delicious idea popped in my head.
“Semi coming. Blow out their driver side tire on my command,” I said.
Depweg took aim and didn’t shoot, waiting.
“Now!” I yelled.
A quick burst of fire hit the intended target and the tire blew out with an explosion of tread. At the speed we were going, the van lost control immediately and was thrown into the oncoming lanes, where it was met with a fully loaded semi-death machine.
There wasn’t an explosion like in the movies, only the sound of crunching metal, like someone crushing a beer can right next to your ear. I was really getting sick of how much the movies lied. The howling of tires followed as the huge semi slammed on the breaks.
I watched the carnage unfold from the side mirror, smiling greatly. The van mimicked an accordion while the massive semi only suffered damage to its extended engine block, leaving the driver relatively unharmed, though a little rattled.
“I love it when a plan comes together,” I said in my best Hannibal Smith impression. Depweg turned his head toward me and smiled.
Still watching, a pair of headlights squared up in my rearview mirror and then grew in size, fast.
Looking down, I noticed I had rubber-necked and let my speed drop back down to 80, giving the second van a chance to move into position.
“Hold on!” I screamed, right as the other van slammed into our rear. “Lilith, damn it! I said no anal on the first date! No means no!” I slammed on the gas but didn’t pull away. There was a moan of metal and I realized we were stuck.
Depweg cried out from behind, “We’re stuck!”
“I know, I know! Watch out!”
The driver’s side back door was pinned open, allowing a front row view of my sitting ass. One of the hitmen was casually sticking his gun out of the passenger window with only his hand exposed now. Everything we could see of the piggy-backed van was bullet proof, leaving us like fish-in-a-barrel. Depweg turned and hid behind the closed door, leaving me as the lone fish.
From the rear, I saw as if in slow motion, the gun barrel pointing in my direction. It seemed to be the size of a cannon while looking down its length, where it ended in the black nothingness of my oblivion. He squeezed the trigger.
Blinding strobe lights broke the darkness and someone punched me in my left shoulder, hard. It threw me forward and to the right, letting go of the wheel. The silver burned white hot, stealing my breath and making my arm hang lifeless at my side. I could feel warmth slowly spread over my jeans. Looking down, I could see blood streaming from my f
inger tips and onto my leg, creating a blossoming circle of crimson. What concerned me was I couldn’t feel the blood passing over my arm.
“John! Are you still with me, man?” Depweg asked, panic growing in his voice.
Slurring my words, I said, “Bastards ruined my pants.” With my good hand, I felt where the impact had been and felt the mess of flesh and torn leather. “And my coat!”
I pulled myself into the passenger seat, letting the caboose-van blindly steer for us. Perplexed that the sting of the silver was dwindling so quickly, I looked down to the front of my shoulder and noticed an even bigger hole. My eyes shifted to the driver’s side of the van where a Jackson Pollock painting of blood coated the white van interior and windshield.
Black bugs swam in my vision like flies on a carcass. I was losing a lot of blood, and with it, my life force.
“Dep…weg,” I managed.
From behind, another volley of gun fire ripped through the interior, ricocheting off the bench and shredding the driver’s seat. One bounced a few times and decided my leg was a good place to call it a day.
I gasped in pain, the black bugs being replaced with solid darkness encompassing my vision at the peripheral.
Looking down at where the bullet stuck half way out of my leg, I said, “Damn… it…” I moved my good hand to where it sat, like an unwanted wart, mocking me.
Grasping it with my fingers, I pulled, but didn’t have the strength to hold on and my fingers slipped with all the blood pooling around the wound.
“Little help?” I cried while fighting to stay conscious. The pain crept up my leg toward my core.
Depweg quickly, and carefully, made his way up the right side of the van and leaned around the seat. He saw what I was doing and reached down and flicked the bullet out of my leg. The ache that was growing up my body slowly ceased its progress and dulled.
“The bullets… are coated,” I said to Depweg.
“I can’t stop them, John,” Depweg said, concern evident in his voice.
“There’s a way, but you’re not gonna like it,” I drawled.
“If it means getting out of this alive, I’m game.”
I started whispering at a barely audible level, forcing his ear down closer to my mouth. I whirled on him, grabbing the other side of his head with my good hand and sank my teeth into his neck. He struggled for a moment before relaxing, realizing what I was doing.
The blood was rich and powerful, like drinking an entire bus load of humans at once. His ancient blood flowed, bringing with it power I hadn’t felt since Ulric let me feed on him for the very first time.
I could feel my wounds start to close, but not heal all the way. My left arm was still just for cosmetic purposes. Would probably have to clean the silver traces out completely before it would heal all the way. Everything else felt powerful. The white insides of the van became bright and glowing. The lights passing overhead had the aura of little suns. I could smell the cordite in the air from the spent ammunition.
Depweg’s heart fluttered, and I grabbed my mental wheel again, throwing Depweg backwards into the van.
With my good arm, I effortlessly smashed out the bullet proof passenger window, which fell away in a single mass covered in spider-web cracks. I crawled outside and on top of our van. I walked the length of the van, eyes almost glowing red and teeth elongated into surgical fangs.
The passenger had reloaded and was sticking his hand out the window again as the driver frantically pointed inside where Depweg lay still.
I forced a whip out of my hand with a blade at the end and cracked the air at the gun. It tumbled to the asphalt below with a hand still attached. I saw eyes grow wide in the balaclava as a spurting stump was pulled back from the window. The other men froze while staring at the geyser of blood as it smeared the interior.
I commanded the whip to straighten into a spear and hefted it above my head.
“Hey, assholes!” I yelled out.
The driver turned his head and leaned forward in the windshield to get a better view, and I slammed the spear through the glass and into the top shoulder right at the neckline. It went deep into his torso and I willed his blood into me. I put all my effort into sucking every last drop before he finally died which made his body shrivel into a husk right in front of his buddies. I yanked the spear out of the man and broke dried bones as I did, like pasta being broken before being thrown into the boiling pot. I laughed maniacally with a wide, tooth filled mouth.
Screams erupted as the professionals lost their composure. Both vans began to decelerate at a noticeable pace.
I leaped on top of the attached van, willing my spear into a sword, and cut right down the middle of roof like a kitchen knife on an empty soda can. With the blade still inside, I forced it apart like a pair of crowbars, forcing the roof to peel open like a surgeon operating on a patient. Once open, the men sprayed gun fire. I anticipated this and had already moved to the back of the van.
Both vans had slowed and veered off the side of the road into the grass. Once the gun fire had started, the vans had stopped. I jumped off the side of the van and turned to the doors.
Using my stolen supernatural lifeforce, I focused on my good hand, bending my body slightly like a pitcher about to throw the fastest ball of his life.
The back doors flung open in unison as I dropped to one knee and threw my hand forward, willing a gargantuan blood-serpent to erupt from my hand and into the van. The tail tapered off and ended at my hand while its enormous mouth swallowed men whole, one at a time. Screams of purest terror reverberated throughout the metal van and escaped into the night.
Shots were fired into the beast and it sent electric currents up my arm, forcing me to clench my teeth to the point where I thought they were about to shatter into pebbles.
Two of the three remaining men were swallowed and the third pointed an empty sub-machine gun at the serpent, as if maybe the gun had forgotten it still had unspent rounds left.
The serpent snapped its jaws at the man’s kicking feet and caught one. As it began to slide up his leg, he placed his other foot on the beast’s snout and pushed. The snake quickly opened its jaws wide and let the other foot slip into its mouth. The man, having dropped the gun, pounded on the nose with his fists and gulped in air with wheezing panic.
I commanded the serpent to stop at his waist, and then walked up to him.
“How did you find us?” I asked.
The assassin, still in panic mode, only looked at me with eyes wide.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” I said to myself and tried to lift my other arm to take control of his synapses. At that moment, I was reminded of my lifeless arm and rolled my eyes. There would be no mind diving on this night.
“The hard way it is,” I said with annoyance while rolling my eyes.
I forced the digesting bodies of his buddies, who were in the girth of the animal, to pass through its side and onto the ground on either side of the man. I had already sucked all the juices from their bodies and had no use for the remaining meat.
The man whimpered at the sight of the bodies who were now dry husks of man jerky. I felt him relieve himself in the snake’s mouth.
“Aw man, gross,” I said. I had to focus on the foreign liquid and separate it from the blood. I let it drop to the grass below.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, and then I’m going to eat you. Then, if I’m not happy with your answers, I’ll find your family and eat them too. Aunts, uncles, parents, your spouse, and even children. Heck, I’ll eat your family dog if you piss me off,” I said with authority.
“Now, how the fuck did you find us?” I demanded.
“Trackers, on the vans,” the man said through sobs.
“Thank you. Was that so hard?” I said as I willed the snake to suck him in with one quick movement. The man held his breath with cheeks puffed out through the balaclava, and sent his hands and feet in all directions, desperate to find an escape. I closed my eyes and willed my blo
od to enter through his skin and free the prisoners that were his own hemoglobin. The life force seeped out of him from every pore, and within seconds, the man went still, letting out his last bubbles of air.
I let him drop next to his friends and willed the serpent back into my being. The snake back in its home, I went to check on Depweg. As I walked past the passenger side of the rear van, something flailed out in the night and struck me in the back of the skull, knocking me flat on my face.
Pulling my good hand up to where I was hit, I could feel a massive, hot piece of metal imbedded in my skin. I pried it off, losing only a bit of blood before the skin knitted itself back together.
Still holding the non-silver bullet, I got up to and turned to see the one-armed man holding a smoking, chrome plated hand cannon revolver through the passenger side window. It was bigger than his own head and pointed directly at me.
I flicked the bullet at his remaining hand which exploded in a mass of bone and tissue.
With a devilish smile, I walked up to him and said, “Guess they let you bring your own hand guns, didn’t they? Didn’t spring for the silver rounds, huh?”
I grabbed the door and ripped it off its hinges, throwing it onto the grass behind me. I reached over him and undid his seat belt and dragged him out of the seat. In his shock at losing both his penis grabbers, he didn’t fight back. Letting him drop to the ground where he laid barely conscious, I walked to where the vans were connecting and kicked the rear van backwards.
“Give me a hand, will ya?” I asked of the downed man. “Oops, never mind.”
Using my body as a brace, our van stayed put as the rear one rolled backwards a few yards, crushing one of the jerky boys I had left behind.
I climbed into the van and stood over Depweg who looked pale. Terror gripped my heart as I realized I had drained more than I had intended.
Leaning down, I lightly slapped his cheeks and said, “Stay with me, man. I got some fresh food for you.”
