Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 46

(1)

LaMastra hotwired Sarah Wolfe’s H1 Alpha—there was no sign of the Hummer’s owner, a fact that twisted the knife in Crow’s heart by another full turn—and they headed out of the hospital lot. The skeletal remains of a burning building lay sprawled across Corn Hill, totally blocking it. “Cut through the school yard,” Crow said. “We can use the side streets to cut over to A-32.”

LaMastra spun the wheel and scraped sparks off his left quarter-panel as he squeezed through the narrow gap in the chain-link fence and cut through the empty school yard.

Mike gave the school a bleak stare but felt no real sense of loss. He had never been happy there, and he’d not expected to ever go back. In his heart, he did not expect to live through the night. He gripped the handle of the sword tightly and said nothing.

As LaMastra reached the far side, he glanced by force of habit into the rearview mirror. “Uh oh,” he said softly. “We have company.”

They all turned to see several cars following.

Val and Mike turned to watch. “Vampires? In those cars?” Val asked.

The detective grunted. “That’d be my guess.”

“They’re after me,” Mike said.

LaMastra glanced at him in the mirror. “I thought they couldn’t kill you.”

“No, but they can run us off the road, kill you guys, and just tie me to a telephone pole or something.”

“Vince,” Crow said, “this would be a good time for reckless driving, wouldn’t you say?”

“Way ahead of you, Boss.” LaMastra scraped through the gate and made a hard right, kicked down on the pedal, and shot down the street at sixty miles an hour. Crow yelled out the turns and Val and Mike watched the dark street behind them. The pursuing cars had vanished into shadows now that they were on streets unlit by fires, but they all knew they were there.

They reached A-32. To their right the road led fifty yards to a twisted tangle of smoking metal that had been the Crestville Bridge; to their left the hardtop cut through shadows toward the farmlands and the forest. LaMastra made a hard left.

As they left the town proper the moonlight bathed the road in a cold light. Far behind them the first of the cars emerged from shadow.

“There’s five of them now,” Val said,

“Persistent sonsabitches!” LaMastra groused. He pressed his foot down even harder and the H1 seemed to laugh with the freedom of speed and power. The big car shot up the hill, gathering speed despite the steep climb. The pursuit cars fell behind. “Crow, this is pretty much a straight run from here to Dark Hollow. I doubt I can lose ’em.”

“Do what you can.”

The H1 clawed its way to the top of the hill, crested it, and began the long plunge. “CHRIST!” LaMastra yelped and stood on the brakes and the Hummer smoked to a stop. A hundred yards ahead three cars were jammed across the narrow road, blocking it entirely. Hungry white faces leered at them through the windows, and a handful of vampires stood on the road. As the H1 rocked on its springs from the sudden stop, the creatures began running toward them.

LaMastra stared at the road. On either side of the obstruction was a narrow verge and then a sheer drop into a drainage ditch. “I’ll take suggestions,” he said hastily.

Crow racked the slide on his Berretta. “Ramming speed.”

LaMastra threw him a tight smile. “Okay, kids, buckle up for safety.”

The running vampires had almost reached the car when the H1 lunged forward. Crow leaned out his window with his pistol and emptied the clip into the pack. Three went down with holes in chests and stomachs, and two more were smashed into the shadows by the grille and weight of the H1, but these two got up and began chasing the car as it rolled toward the roadblock. Behind the H1, the five pursuit cars crested the hill and swooped down like predatory birds. The lead car did not even try to veer around one of the running vampires and the creature was smashed down and then crushed by each succeeding vehicle.

LaMastra bellowed like a bear as the muscular H1 smashed into the roadblock at the point where two smaller cars, a Fiat and a Saab, sat nose to nose. With all the weight and momentum behind it, the Hummer punched through, swatting the smaller cars aside. Crow leaned out the window with his shotgun and fired round after round of the metal-vaporizing Shok-Lok rounds into the lead pursuit car, hitting the grille and turning the engine instantly into junk. The car lost control and slewed sideways into one of the barricade cars, catching a vampire between the two machines and crushing him from crotch to knees. The other pursuit cars tried to jam on brakes, tried to swerve, but they were going too fast, and they hit, one after another in a collapsing accordion of torn metal and ruptured gas tanks.

Behind the H1 the world erupted into towering flame as a fiery fist of smoke and burning gasoline punched upward into the sky and shock waves chased down the hills.

“Goddamn!” yelled LaMastra in triumph. Crow was nodding as he reloaded the Remington. Val and Mike were twisted around backward, watching the tower of flame.

(2)

Jonatha led the way, the shotgun’s unfamiliar weight heavy in her sweating hands. Behind her was a straggling line of patients, staff, and visitors she’d gathered from the top four floors. Many of the visitors were dazed and followed her with glazed eyes and vapid smiles. One tried to give her some candy corn, but Jonatha had long since lost her appetite. A staff nurse—whom Jonatha had found hiding in a utility closet—had tried to take charge of the exodus, but after a good look at Jonatha, who was covered in blood, over six feet tall, and carrying a shotgun, the nurse just shut up and helped round up the survivors.

For as busy a hospital as Pinelands Hospital, there were pitifully few ambulatory survivors, and of those fewer still would be any good in a fight. Even so, it didn’t take a lot of strength to pull a trigger, so Jonatha handed out handguns to the weakest and the long guns to the strongest.

The elevators were out, but the nurse told her that there was a zigzag ramp in the back of the east wing, which had long sloping ramps for use during fires or other emergencies when the elevators were out. Jonatha led her charges that way, gathering other survivors along the way. Newton was on the front gurney, crowded in with an old lady who had just had her knee replaced; Dr. Weinstock’s heavy pistol was clutched in his hands. At the end of the line was a farmer who had come to the hospital to visit a friend and who now carried Eddie Oswald’s service Glock, the spare magazines stuffed in the pockets of his bib overalls.

Every floor of the hospital was a shambles, but there did not seem to be anything moving, alive or dead, except the people who joined her parade.

The nurse leaned close to Jonatha, “We can get to the old triage unit—it’s where they do seminars on ER techniques. It’s not used for patients except if we get overflow. It’s on the next floor down and it will have been closed tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Jonatha said, “let’s get everyone in there and barricade the door.”

But the triage room was already occupied when they got there. A man sat on the edge of one of the tables, a can of Coke in his hands, a pistol lying next to him.

Jonatha gasped and brought the shotgun up to cover him. She could see that he was not a vampire. One side of his face was burned and bubbled, the skin hanging in melted folds; one eye was as white as a boiled egg. He waggled the soda can at her.

“Hey,” he said with a smile that made his disfigured face look positively hideous. “Come on in.”

Jonatha waved the others back and entered the room very cautiously. Just because the man was not one of them did not immediately allay her fears. Even under the burned skin he looked mean and there was a twinkle to his one good eye that made Jonatha feel stripped naked. His gaze crawled up and down her body, lingering appreciatively on her chest, and then finally staring boldly into her eyes. “Yeah, you can definitely come in.”

“Who are you?” she asked nervously, peering around the room to make sure there was no one else lurking in there.

He watched her examination and chuckled. “Ain’t no one else, darlin’. Just me. Just the Incredible Melting Man.” He giggled like he was stoned. “Come on in.”

“I…have a bunch of people with me. We all need to come in.”

“Sure, sure, bring ’em in.” He waved the bottle. “I was wondering when you’d get down this way. I was in the hall a few times and heard you talking.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You weren’t in the hall. I didn’t see you.”

“No,” he said with a sly smile, “but I saw you.”

Jonatha frowned. “And you sure you’re all alone?”

“Honest to God, sweetie,” Vic Wingate said, “aside from you I’m the only living soul in this room.”

(3)

They came to him, flooding in from the town, from the farms, from the lonely houses that now stood empty of life along the fringes of the black highway. Those that did not have cars came running, their tireless limbs carrying them across the miles, their powerful muscles helping them leap and dive and climb and drop. They came down the long hill, and they came over the tops of the mountain; they came through secret ways in the forest, drawn to the forbidden swamp deep in the heart of Dark Hollow, compelled by the force of Ubel Griswold’s dark desire.

The farmers came first, their overalls and jeans and flannel shirts splashed with their own blood and the blood of neighbors and family. Sometimes they came in whole family groups, each white face eager to be in the presence of their new father. They lumbered into the clearing and fell prostrate before the bubbling swamp, overwhelmed with Griswold’s nearness, lost in the aura of his power. Then came the teenagers from the Haunted Hayride. Scores of them with slashed throats and black eyes full of hunger. They laughed and smiled, delighting in their freedom, in their strength, intoxicated by the blood that thundered through their veins. The town folk—residents and tourists—came later, most of them in Halloween costumes, and they cavorted like jesters in the court of the king.

They gathered and danced and leapt and sang out in their joy, feeding off the energies released by the Ritual even as Griswold fed off each of them, off each of their kills. It was a sharing of energy, an orgy of parasites.

Two figures stood at the edge of the clearing, and between them slumped a third. The two watchers were as deeply moved as all the others, but they were not allowed to join in. It was their special task to wait, to watch, and to be ready with the sacrifice that sagged in a dead faint in their cold hands.

Ruger stroked the hand he held, delighting in its warmth, knowing that it was the quickly flowing blood that kept it warm even in this cold place. He was glutted, having killed and fed so many times tonight that he had lost count, satiating himself so fully that he had many times had to vomit up the mingled human wine in order to be able to keep on feeding; yet still he hungered for this unconscious woman’s blood. Not that he desired her in the way he had desired his grinning consort, who stood holding this woman’s other hand. No, he desired her because she was the chosen sacrifice, because she was taboo. She was reserved strictly for the Man, and that made Ruger hunger for her with a fierce passion. He knew that Lois felt it, too, and as he turned to her she hissed at him, smiling as her tongue lolled between her fangs. Her pale body was ripe and white, as hard as polished stone. They had used each other over and over again since last night, since the moment when Ruger had forced innocent blood into her mouth and released her into a world of dark delight and bloodred pleasure. That act had driven the soul out of her, had freed her. Now she was his and he was hers; their hungers were equal and incredibly intense.

Ruger had known from the very moment he’d first tasted her vampire blood that she would be like him, a killer who delighted in the joy of the kill, who craved the fear, the hurt, the desperation that could be provoked in the struggling victim. In that way they were more like Griswold than like the rest of the revelers gathered here. A darker power burned in their hearts, and they delighted in it.

Together they watched the writhing bodies. Some of them had stripped and were abusing each other in every possible way, and in some ways only possible for creatures of their kind, creatures with their strength and endurance. There were screams of pain and ecstasy, and Ruger felt himself getting hard as the children of the Man went insane with passion, became frantic with want, as they glutted themselves on blood and violence. All in his name. Ruger thought it was all a blast. As much as he wanted to defile this woman, he also wanted to discard her and throw himself into the press, to rend and tear and take. He wanted to watch Lois as she rutted and bit and tore and screamed. She was so vicious and cold and passionate that it made Ruger dizzy just to think about her at the moment of a kill.

Then a tremble seemed to rippled through the earth under his feet, something different, not caused by the twisting bodies. The first contraction of the swamp’s dark womb as it readied its unholy child for birth. He flashed Lois a razor-sharp smile.

“It’s happening, baby! Can you feel it?”

Lois ran a tongue over the serrated line of her fangs and ran her fingers over her blood-gorged loins. Beneath their feet, the earth groaned in pain.

(4)

They encountered no other roadblocks as they swept along the road, though they passed dozens of wrecked cars. Beside the road a few farmhouses burned like lonely torches, but most of the houses stood dark and empty, surrounded by fields of blighted corn and shadows.

The road unraveled under the car and the miles fled away behind them. Mike closed his eyes and leaned back against the cushions. His hands were still clamped around the intricate hilt of the katana, and his lips moved as if in prayer. He realized he was doing that and stopped, and try as he might he could not recall what words his lips had formed or what prayer he had said, if it was a prayer at all.

Mike felt totally alienated from the others, as if he were from another world or part of a different species; then, darkly, he realized that indeed he was. Ever since he had opened himself up to what he was and who he was, ever since he had let the dhampyr within him emerge, his whole world had changed. He looked at the others and wondered how it was that they could not hear the screams that constantly shrilled in his ears, how they could not sense the huge, pervasive atmosphere of total malevolence that was clamped down over the entire town.

Crow reached back and took Val’s hand and their eyes met. She mouthed the words “I’m scared.” He nodded and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, and his own lips formed the words “I love you.” It wasn’t much to offer each other, but it was the only talisman they had to share.

As LaMastra drove, he tried not to think about what was going to happen. The sight of Frank Ferro charred and blackened in death was burned into the front of his brain, regulating his rage, keeping the gas turned up. It kept the fear banked.

He flicked a glance now and then at the others, seeing them in the rearview mirror, watching as they prepared for what was ahead. Twice he saw something weird and almost spoke up. It was there and gone, just a shimmer in the air of the backseat between Mike and Val. There and gone when he blinked.

“We’re here,” LaMastra said quietly, and Crow turned as the H1 approached the turnoff to Dark Hollow Road. “God help us all.”

There was no reception for them, no guard unit of vampires. Griswold was incredibly confident, or arrogant.

LaMastra made the turn. Everyone checked their weapons for the twentieth time and slapped pockets to feel the reassuring bulges of extra ammunition. Val took a jar of garlic oil from her pocket, smeared some on, and handed it around. When Crow was finished, he handed it back to Val, who reached forward and dabbed some on LaMastra’s throat and face as he fought the car along the rutted road.

Then, suddenly they were in the clearing. LaMastra eased the car to a stop and switched off the engine.

Crow turned in his seat and faced the others, though inside the shadowy car he could barely see them; even so they all felt each other’s presence. “No pep talk, no rousing speech,” he said. “We go in fast and dirty, and we kill as many of them as we can. Val, if I die, you can’t go to pieces, just as I can’t if you’re killed. That’s the way to lose a war. If any of us dies, then the others have to stay focused.”

“They killed my family,” Val said tightly. “I want them all dead.”

“Vince?”

The cop grunted. “Frank may have been a stuffy old fart, but he was a good man. And he was my friend. I think I deserve some kind of payback.” He paused and grunted again; maybe it was a laugh. “Besides, we LaMastras are hard sonsabitches to kill.”

“Yeah, so I noticed.” Crow turned to where Mike’s silhouette crouched on the edge of the back seat. “Mike?”

“You know what I think,” he said and jerked open the door.

LaMastra glanced at his retreating back. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer there’s got attitude.”

“Lay off him, Vince,” said Crow.

“Hey, it’s not criticism. I just don’t want to have to waste time protecting him, you dig?”

Val jacked a round into her shotgun. “This is war. Everyone pulls their own weight.”

They got out. The ATVs were out of gas, but Crow picked up the gasoline sprayer unit and slipped it on as they all looked down the hill. He took coils of rope from the duffels strapped to the ATVs, tied them to the bumper of the Hummer, and tossed the ends over the edge. Overhead the storm clouds had thinned and there was a hint of moonlight, just enough to paint pale silver on the descending line of shrubs. They lingered at the top for only a moment, and then without a further word they started down the hill, using the ropes as guidelines but moving fast, hurrying toward the swamp.