Gus, at the head of the pack, was about to run this vampire motherfucker through when he heard him speak — and speak Spanish. The words stopped Gus — and the vampire-hunting Sapphires behind him — just in time.
Angel said nothing, letting his facial expression do all the talking as he turned and pointed behind him.
“More bloodsuckers,” said Gus, understanding. “That’s what we’re here for.” He stared at the big man. There was something noble and familiar about him.
Alfonso Creem charged through the doorway, armed with a thick silver rapier with a bell-cup hilt to protect his hand from the blood worms. That protection was negated by the use of his other hand, bare except for a silver- knuckled multi-finger ring inscribed with fake diamonds spelling C-R-E-E-M.
He went after the vampires with furious chops and brutal blows. Gus was right behind him, a UV lamp in one hand, a silver sword in the other. More Sapphires followed close behind.
There were more nesting vamps than they had bargained for, and the white blood spilled like sludgy, sour milk. Still, they cut and chopped their way through, and, when they were done, they returned to Angel, who remained standing on the other side of the broken door.
Angel was in a state of shock. He had recognized the Guptas among Creem’s victims, and he couldn’t get over their undead faces, and the creature howls they emitted when the Colombian hacked at their white-blooded throats.
These were the types of punks he used to slap around in his movies.
“The end of the world,” said Gus. “Who are you?”
“I’m… I am nobody,” Angel said, recovering. “I worked here.” He pointed up at an angle. “Live there.”
“Your entire building is infested, man.”
“Infested? Are they really…?”
“Vampires? You bet your ass.”
Angel felt dizzy — disoriented — this couldn’t be happening. Not to him. A whirl of emotions overtook him and amid them he was able to recognize one that had long ago deserted him.
It was excitement.
Creem was flexing his silver fist. “Leave him. These freaks are waking up all over the place, and I still got some more killing in me.”
“What do you say?” asked Gus, turning back to his fellow countryman. “Nothing for you here.”
“Look at that knee,” said Creem. “No one’s going to slow me up, get me turned into one of them stingers.”
Gus pulled a small sword from the Sapphires’ equipment bag and handed it to Angel. “This is his building. Let’s see if he can earn his keep.”
As though some sort of psychic alarm had been sounded, the vampire residents of Angel’s building were ready for battle. The undead emerged from every doorway, climbing effortlessly through obstacles and staircases.
During a stairway battle, Angel saw a neighbor of his, a seventy-three-year-old woman with a walker, use the banister as a jumping point to traverse the stairwell between floors. She and others moved with the stupefying grace of primates.
In his movies, the enemy announced itself with a glower, and accommodated the hero by moving slowly for the kill. Angel didn’t exactly “earn his keep,” though his brute strength did give him certain advantages. His wrestling knowledge came back to him in close combat situations, despite his limited mobility. And he felt like an action hero once again.
Like evil spirits, the undead kept coming. As though summoned from the surrounding buildings, wave after wave of pale, slithery-tongued creatures swarmed up from the lower floors, and the tenement walls ran white. They fought them the way firemen fight fires, pushing back, tamping out flare-ups, and attacking hot spots. They functioned as a stone-cold execution squad, and Angel would later be amazed to learn that this was their inaugural nighttime assault. Two of the Colombians were stung, lost to the scourge — and yet when they were done, the punks only seemed to want more.
Compared to this, they said, daylight hunting was a breeze.
Once they had stemmed the tide, one of the Colombians found a carton of smokes and they all lit up. Angel hadn’t smoked in years, but the taste and the smell blocked out the stench of the dead things. Gus watched the smoke dissipate and offered up a silent prayer for the departed.
“There is a man,” said Gus. “An old pawnbroker over in Manhattan. He was the first to clue me to these vamps. Saved my soul.”
“No chance,” said Creem. “Why go all the way across the river when there is killing galore here?”
“You meet this guy, you’ll understand why.”
“How do you know he’s still kickin’ it?”
“I sure hope he is. We’re going over the bridge at first light.”
Angel took a minute then to return to his apartment for the last time. His knee ached as he looked around: unwashed clothes heaped in the corner, dirty dishes in his sink, the general squalor of the place. He had never taken any pride in his living condition — and it shamed him now. Perhaps, he sensed, he knew all the time that he was destined for something better — something he could never have foreseen — and he was just waiting for the call.
He threw some extra clothes into a grocery bag, including his knee brace, and then lastly — almost ashamedly, because taking it was like admitting it was his most cherished possession, all he had left of who he once was — he grabbed the silver mask.
He folded the mask into his jacket pocket and, with it next to his heart, he realized that, for the first time in decades, he felt good about himself.
Eph finished tending to Vasiliy’s injuries, giving particular attention to cleaning out the worm hole in his forearm. The ratcatcher had sustained a great deal of damage, but none of it permanent, except maybe the hearing loss and ringing in his right ear. The metal shard came out of his leg and he hobbled on it but did not complain. He was still standing. Eph admired that, and felt a bit like an Ivy League momma’s boy by his side. For all his education and scholarly achievements, Eph felt infinitely less useful to the cause than Fet.
But that would soon change.
The exterminator opened his poison closet, showing Setrakian his bait packs and traps, his halothane bottles and toxic blue kibble. Rats, he explained, lacked the biological mechanism for vomiting. The main function of emesis is to purge a body of toxic substances, which was why rats were particularly susceptible to poisoning. Why they had evolved and developed other traits to compensate for this. One was that they could ingest just about anything, including nonfood materials such as clay or concrete, which helped to dilute a toxin’s effect on the rat’s body until they could get rid of the poison as waste. The other was the rats’ intelligence, their complex food-avoidance strategies that aided in their survival.
“Funny thing,” said Fet, “is that when I ripped out that thing’s throat, and got a good look in there?”
“Yes?” said Setrakian.
“The way it looked to me, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they can’t puke either.”
Setrakian nodded, thinking on that. “I believe you are correct,” he said. “May I ask, what is the chemical makeup of these rodenticides?”
