Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 42

(1)

Vic Wingate sat on a plastic chair with his back to a cool concrete wall, a wet towel against his face and morphine dancing in his eyes. On the floor in front of him was a dead nurse with her throat ripped away. She had given him the towel and told him to wait, and she’d smiled at him like he was a real person, not a circus sideshow freak. Not the Incredible Melting Man. She had been nice. Now she was dead. As dead as everyone else in the waiting room.

Vic sipped from the can of Coke she’d bought him from the vending machine. It felt soooo good on his burned throat.

Two vampires came past him, shooting him a brief and uncertain glance as they bent toward the dead nurse. One of them cut his own forearm and moved to hold it out over the nurse’s slack lips.

Vic shook his head. “No. Leave her be.”

The vampire who had cut himself looked up surprised. “She’s meat for the master.”

“Leave her be!” Vic barked, lowering his towel.

The second vampire made a rude sound. “Ruger said—”

Vic’s one good eye was like a blue laser. “Ruger said? Ruger? Who the hell is Ruger to say shit?” The morphine was dulling the pain and giving him some of himself back. “Do you know who I am?”

The vampires said nothing.

“I’m the Man’s right hand, you pasty-faced shitbags. Ruger doesn’t tell you what to do—I do. And if you don’t like it, then why don’t you take it up with the Man?”

Terror blossomed in their faces.

Vic got up and walked over to the closest one and crowded him. Vic’s burned face was a more frightening spectacle than their pale masks, and in Vic’s eyes the vampires could imagine the face of the Man. They shrank back.

“This one stays dead,” Vic told them. “You two had better make sure no one else screws with her or I’ll bury you both down deep and tight and you’ll never be able to feed, never be able to rise. You’ll stay down there and rot—forever!”

The two vampires fled, leaving Vic in the ER waiting room with the dead nurse. There were other corpses there as well, but Vic didn’t give a damn about them. He only wanted the nurse left alone. She had been kind to him. He found the towel and pressed it against his face as he sat.

(2)

Susco and Gunn watched the slaughter from the stage, the two of them rooted to the boards as the vampires tore into the audience. Each of them wanted to believe that this was some kind of publicity stunt, some elaborate prank being played on them by Crow. But when they saw the reporter from Channel 3 go down with half his face torn away any chance they had for self-deception, and any hope there was of this being a joke, died right there.

There was sound and movement to their right and they turned to see a big man come lumbering onstage, moving with the slow, mindless shuffle of a zombie from one of their own films. This one was real, though, and his face was smeared with bright blood, his eyes not completely vacant, but rather filled with a feral and primitive predatory lust.

Gunn grabbed Susco and hauled him back as the big man swiped at them with black-taloned hands. Susco nearly tripped, but turned the stumble into a crouching run and bolted for stage left, with Gunn—who was taller—catching up with long-legged hustle.

“This way!” Susco yelled, pointing toward the emergency exit, but just as they reached it, the door flew open and two more of the shambling Dead Heads crowded in, moaning with hunger and reaching for them

Susco ducked under their grab, but as he dodged out of the way the leading creature caught the shoulder of Gunn’s jacket. Susco kicked at the thing’s knee hard enough to buckle it. It fell and dragged Gunn down with it.

As Gunn fell he rolled onto his back and kicked up and caught the monster’s face, driving it back.

Susco saw a toolbox sitting open on a pair of sawhorses and he snatched a handful of tools and began throwing them as fast as he could; he hit the monster who was grappling with Gunn with a hammer and the other one with a big pair of channel locks. The blows did no damage but made the creature holding Gunn stagger, and that gave his prey the chance to hastily shrug out of his jacket and make a break for it. Susco picked up the whole toolbox and threw it, catching the monster in the face, knocking him backward into the orchestra pit.

Gun caught up to Susco and shoved him toward the far exit. They slammed into the crash bar—and rebounded. The door, against all fire regulations and common sense, was locked.

(3)

Val kept her gun trained on the door while Newton, Mike, and Jonatha overturned the heavy medical bed and used it to reinforce their barricade. There was still pounding on the door, but it was sporadic now, more a hit and run away teasing. That or the creatures had learned caution.

Weinstock, dressed now but standing in shoes that were filled with blood from the cuts on his feet, stood next to her.

“Crow will come,” he kept saying to her, “Crow will come.”

“I know,” Val said, wanting to believe it.

None of them were watching the window. The open, gaping, inviting window.

(4)

Terry ran through the streets faster than a galloping horse. At first he dodged from shadow to shadow, but as he changed he grew bolder. The crowds on the street were thinning as the tourists and residents of Pine Deep fled into houses or out into the country, or died. Many hundreds of them wandered around in a drug-induced haze or had become so intensely freaked that they ran screaming into the shadows—victims of Vic Wingate’s psychedelic-laced candy. Terry could smell the drugs in them, could smell how it flavored and distorted their sweat. He ignored them as he ran.

Around him the people of the town—of the town, no longer his town—died in the thousands. Corpses littered the ground or slumped over wrecked cars or drifted through the night with red smiling mouths. Fires burned everywhere, raging in some places with inferno fury. The air was thick with the mingled smells of smoke and blood.

No one tried to stop him as he ran. A few people saw him and ran screaming into the darkness, the very sight of him tearing apart what little sanity they still possessed after the explosions and the mass killings. One or two just stared at him with eyes that were filled with nothing, reflecting the emptiness of minds blown dark by too much horror.

The pale-faced ones shrank away, yielding to him, letting him pass.

Through the city streets he ran on two feet, even though those feet were not structured for the job, but if he kept his weight far forward, then the very speed at which he moved kept him balanced, and every once in a while he would tap the ground with his hands to steady himself. As the burning stores and houses thinned out and he broke out into the clearer, cleaner country air, he finally dropped to all fours and ran along at an amazing speed, his powerful muscles rippling and bunching under his tough new hide. Moonlight shone down on him, sparkling on the silvery tips of each of the hairs in the fur along his shoulders and back. His claws left crescent-shaped divots in the blacktop as he raced along the dark road.

Far overhead a flock of night birds had begun to follow him. They began riding the lofty thermals, but he was moving too fast for that, and so they dropped lower and began flapping their ragged wings to keep pace.

Mile after mile unfolded beneath him as he ran, and the manor houses gave way to the long stretches of farmland. Vast avenues of blighted corn and wheat rustled in the breeze; knobbed rows of diseased pumpkins watched as what was no longer Terry Wolfe passed on its way to Dark Hollow.

(5)

There was no Pine Deep Police Department during the Red Wave. By the time the first explosions had rocked the town, the only living members of the department were Gus Bernhardt, Ginny—who ran the switchboard—and Jim Polk.

Now it was just Polk. Well, maybe Tow-Truck Eddie, too, but Polk didn’t care much about him either way.

The volume of the screams was fading now as the tide turned from the hundreds with Ruger against the thousands in town for the Festival, to the thousands with Ruger hunting the hundreds who were trying to flee. The math was working out the way Vic had planned. All of the explosions had gone off. The bridges were gone, along with the power plant, the gas lines, the cable, phone lines, cell towers, all the police cars, and the TV and radio stations. All exactly according to plan, and it was getting a bit quieter in town—not that Sergeant Polk noticed. When it had all started he’d clamped earphones over his head and waited it out with the Grateful Dead screaming in his ears. He thought the irony would amuse him, but it just made his stomach feel worse.

He sat in Gus Bernhardt’s oversize swivel chair, crossed ankles propped on the chief’s desk, a nearly empty bottle of Wild Turkey cradled against his crotch. On the computer table that jutted out from the desk, Polk’s pistol sat gleaming in the light from a pair of candles. The gun was fully loaded with hollow points and ready to hand. He’d already replaced the two rounds he’d used on Ginny. Her plump body law sprawled under the desk, but some of her was splashed all over the front of the dispatcher’s console. As for Gus, the vampires had taken him in the first minute. The fat bastard probably fed a dozen of them.

Polk looked up at the clock. 7:33 P.M. Just a little over three hours since it all started.

He took a long pull on the Wild Turkey and stared out the windows at the havoc. Some people still ran by screaming, some in Halloween costumes, some in funeral dress with horror-movie faces. In the distance, against the darkness, he could see the glow of fire molded around the soft edges of the twisting column of smoke rising from the phone company building. The front window of the chief’s office had a long jagged crack that ran crookedly from upper left to lower right. Polk had watched in fascination as the original blasts had sent that crack skittering across the glass. He was amazed that it held, even when the power station blew. It still might go, he figured, since the wind was picking up outside. He knew that he should move, that he was dangerously close to the glass, but he just sat there and took another sip of bourbon.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the doorknob jiggle, and he turned to watch Jennifer Whitelaw from the CVS down the block desperately trying to work the handle. There was a long line of blood trickling down from her scalp and it ran alongside of her nose. A few drops had splashed onto her blouse. She beat on the door and even kicked it. Polk watched as her face changed from hope to confusion to anger and then to a revelatory mask of accusation. Then she was gone. A white hand appeared out of the gloom and snatched her away. Two tiny droplets of blood had flown from her face as she was jerked back and they splattered against the glass. The splashes were head-high to the door and Polk thought they looked like red, condemning eyes.

He drank the bourbon.

By his crossed heels was the thick manila envelope Vic Wingate had dropped off that afternoon. Fifty thousand bloodstained dollars in tight bundles. Another big chunk of Ruger’s drug money. Polk had counted the money and as he turned over each bill he saw at least one drop of old, dried blood. Fifty thousand dollars, and a half-pound bag of coke to sweeten the deal. And the note: FOR SERVICES RENDERED. Vic’s little joke.

Vic has smirked as he handed it over, had given Polk a neat little bow and a sly wink, like he was giving a dollar to a kid, sending him off to the movies so he could screw his big sister. That kind of a sly wink.

The bottle was almost empty and so was Polk. He nursed the whiskey and listened to the Dead and watching the dying outside. Beside him the pistol ached to be held, it longed to be kissed. There should always be a last kiss, he reflected, after you’ve collected your blood money.

(6)

Tonight Pine Deep’s Dead End Drive-In lived up to its name. Every single car was an island of death. Shattered windows, doors standing open, upholstery splashed with blood, the gravel around the cars littered with shreds of torn clothing, cracked eyeglasses, broken cell phones.

Pine Deep’s nature made the slaughter so successful; the tourists believed what was happening was a joke, all part of the show. By the time the truth of it was impossible to deny, half of the them were dead; the rest fled and were hunted.

Perhaps because he was on a stage and had a different perspective on the events as they unfolded, or perhaps he’d been in too many movies that dealt with this exact sort of thing, Ken Foree alone managed to keep his head. He knew the difference between stunts and real violence. When he witnessed the slaughter he knew that this was no stunt. He didn’t know what it was, but it was real.

As one of the mindless Dead Heads began crawling over the edge of the stage, Foree snatched up the heavy microphone stand and swung the weighted steel base with every ounce of strength he possessed. The disk-shaped base crushed the creature’s skull. As it fell dead, he leapt down from the stage and charged the second creature.

When that one went down he started shouting for the patrons to run, and when those who could still move got into gear he led them in a mad dash to the projection booth. He was able to cram eighty people in the concrete pillbox. That’s all that could make it before he had to slam the steel door in the face of five more of the shambling killers. The projection window had metal shutters, and Foree slammed them shut and threw the slide bolts.

The creatures beat on the door and screamed in rage and hunger. The people packed inside screamed, huddling down in the dark, pressing their hands to their ears.

The person nearest him clutched his sleeve. “Can they get in?” she begged.

“No,” he said, “no, they can’t get in.” He hoped he wasn’t lying.

(7)

Crow pointed his shotgun directly at Ruger’s grinning face.

“Go ahead, hotshot—splatter me and you splatter junior here.” Ruger gave the kid a fierce shake.

Beside Crow, LaMastra braced himself against the wall and aimed down the stairs at the four vampires who clustered at the lower landing. Five others milled hungrily behind Ruger. The trap was a good one and they had walked right into it.

“Well, well,” murmured Ruger, “this is a hoot. I’m so happy to see you I could shit daffodils.”

The child, a thin boy of about nine, struggled against the white hands that held him, but he might as well have been trying to work loose from iron shackles. The killer kept one arm wrapped around the kid’s body, pinning his arms; with the other hand he traced little lines across the boy’s slender throat. The kid winced and wriggled helplessly.

“Let him go,” Crow said, twitching the barrel of the shotgun.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that.”

“Let him go and then you can have me.”

Ruger shook his head. “I already have you, asshole. Both of you. And soon as I’m done kicking your ass I’m going to go upstairs and take that broke-nose bitch of yours. Oh, don’t look surprised. You think I don’t know she’s here? I can smell that piece of farm-girl snatch a mile off.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Crow said softly.

“What…again?” Everyone laughed at that except the living. “Unless you haven’t figured it out by now, dickweed, you can’t kill me.”

“Third time’s the charm, Karl. Let the boy go, then you and me can dance a bit.”

“Or,” Ruger said, enjoying this, “we could just tear your arms off and beat you with them. Really, no joke. We’ve already done that tonight. Twice.”

“Three times, boss,” someone said, and they all cracked up again.

“Crow…” LaMastra said under his breath.

“Tell me something, Karl…what’s with all the fireworks and shit. What’s the point? This part of some bullshit evil master plan? You think tearing down a small town like this makes you—what, some kind of vampire king or some shit?”

Ruger pretended to be interested. “Actually we do have a master plan. And, funnily enough, it’s actually pretty darned evil.”

“Oh? Like what? You take over Pine Deep and then you turn it into a vampire tourist trap?”

“No, dumbass, we take over Pine Deep and then we take over the whole shitting world.”

Now it was Crow’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, right. And when the National Guard start dropping napalm on your ass, what then? You going to hide behind a kid then, too, you cowardly piece of shit?”

Ruger’s smile didn’t falter. “Don’t worry, boy, we have plans for that. The Man has plans for everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Put the kid down.”

“Blow me.” Ruger gave the kid’s throat a quick squeeze; the kid winced again, his face screwed up; he bared his teeth as he fought against the killer’s iron grip.

“Crow…” LaMastra said again.

“Don’t be a pussy, Karl. You’re supposed to be the übertough guy…put the kid down.”

“Sorry, can’t do it.”

Ruger pushed the kid forward and took a step down toward Crow. Below, the vampires moved up a couple of steps, smiling at how Ruger was playing this.

LaMastra flinched away from them so that he and Crow were tight back-to-back.

“Rock and a hard place,” mocked the killer. “You can’t kill the kid, and that popgun can’t kill me.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Crow said, putting some edge to his voice.

Ruger’s smile flickered just the faintest bit. “Well, well, you think you have some kind of secret weapon to use against the big bad vampires. Oooo…scary. Look at me ready to piss myself I’m so scared.” He jostled the kid as he took another step. “Let me guess…silver bullets?”

“I’m not that dumb, Karl.”

“You’re not that smart. So…what is it? Holy water? I wash my dick with holy water.”

“Take a sniff, jackass.”

The killer’s smile flickered again, longer this time. The other vampires shifted uncomfortably, and still they all took another step down toward Crow.

“Yeah, well, you still can’t shoot, smartass.” Ruger lifted the kid off the floor to provide maximum coverage.

“Watch me,” Crow said.

And he fired the shotgun.

Ruger was startled, but he was fast. So incredibly fast. He watched Crow’s eyes, saw the tightening of his finger, and then he threw the boy at Crow as he dodged sideways. The blast caught the kid in the chest and flung his small body backward against the other vampires. Ruger ducked back behind one of the others, shoving two of them into the path of Crow’s next shot. Then he was gone up the stairs.

“NO!” screamed LaMastra as he watched the child’s body tumble down the stairs. The vampires stared, as stunned as the detective was, but Crow jacked a round and the sound of it broke the tableau. He fired and the closest vampire was hurled back against the other, his face torn away. Garlic-soaked pellets hit the creatures behind them and they screamed in fear and agony.

Crow spun around and fired past LaMastra down the stairs. “Vince! Snap the hell out of it! Kill the bastards!” He fired again and that broke the detective’s trance. They both opened up as the vampires, caught between Ruger’s orders and the reality that these men had weapons that could kill their kind, hesitated. That was enough for Crow. In the narrow confines of the stairwell the two shotguns cut them to ribbons.

Then it was over except for the echoes of thunder that rolled up and down the concrete tower. Crow sagged back and sat down hard on the blood-slick steps, not caring that he sat between the outstretched legs of a dead monster. LaMastra stood over him, chest heaving as he stared at the carnage. He shifted the shotgun to his left hand, grabbed Crow by the front of the shirt, jerked him to his feet, and slammed him against the wall with such force that Crow felt the world explode in a blinding fireworks display.

“You bastard!” he screamed. “You sick murderous bastard!” With each word he banged Crow against the blood-splattered wall.

“Vince…!”

“I should have let that son of a bitch kill you!”

“Vince!”

“You shot that kid!”

Crow had just about enough of it. As LaMastra hauled him forward and began to slam him back again, Crow crunched the stock of the shotgun hard against the side of LaMastra’s ribs and at the same time pivoted his whole body sharply around. The speed of the pivot and the force of the blow spun LaMastra into the wall; then it was the sergeant who crashed into the wall, and Crow brought the barrel of his shotgun up under LaMastra’s chin hard enough to lift the detective onto his toes.

“The kid was already dead, you stupid shit!”

LaMastra blinked. “W—what?”

“He was a vampire! He was part of Ruger’s trap. Christ, do you think I’d actually kill a kid, for Christ’s sake?” He stepped back, resisting the urge to butt-stroke LaMastra with the shotgun stock, but he knew that would only be transference for what he was feeling.

“How…how—?”

Crow pointed with the shotgun at the twisted, broken corpse. “Don’t you pay attention? The kid had teeth like a rattlesnake.”

LaMastra turned and looked down. The kid was in a broken sprawl, his mouth open. The fangs hadn’t yet completely retracted into the gums.

“I…didn’t. I was looking down the stairs, man—”

“Save it. We have bigger fish to fry.” Crow said. “Just reload and let’s go find Val.”