It made it worse. The vampire might have forgotten it held Cat, but it sure as hell noticed Jack. It hissed and spat and struck fangs at him like a snake. Only Cat’s grip on its jagged throat kept the gray teeth from Jack’s face. And when one of the gnarled hands loosed itself from Cat to grab at him, Jack had about half a second of triumph before he felt that awesome vise-grip on his arm. And he punched and kicked at the monster to free himself but he was as helpless as Cat, who, crazily, still held on to the light.
“Felix!” hollered Jack desperately. “FELIX!” as the three of them bounced and crashed and hissed and punched, with the lantern throwing shadows through the dust.
There was a sharp tug as the winch came on and began to drag them toward the doorway. At first Jack was delighted — the sunlight would kill it — and then he remembered
“No!” he cried into his headset. “Carl! Turn it off! You’ll burn us alive!”
The cable went immediately slack.
“Felix!” cried Jack desperately. “FELIX!”
The monster began twisting and spitting at them again.
“Cat!” yelled Crow. “Drop that damn light!”
“Huh?” muttered Cat. Then “Oh… yeah!”
And he finally released the lantern so he could use both hands and the light bounced and clanked loudly on the cement and began to roll away from them, over and over, spilling light into the dust, before it was kicked back toward them by the shoe of a six-foot-four-inch black man who had been killed while working the graveyard shift at the Texaco station.
The man still wore his uniform. It still bore his name, “Roy,” on the little patch above his left breast pocket.
But he didn’t care. He didn’t care what he wore. He didn’t care that he was “Roy.” He cared only for the smell of living, pumping blood.
The half dozen others looming behind him out of the darkness felt the same way.
The first man to see the horde appear was Adam, sprawled stunned and bleeding on the edge of the light from the other lantern. Still unable to do much more than stumble, he could only moan, “Sweet blessed Jesus! Jack! Look out!”
Jack saw them. He saw — what was it? — six, seven, eight of them? Coming for them, shuffling at them and he couldn’t get loose from this little squirt he had already
“FELIX!!” he screamed and then, in his panic, went into a frenzy of his own.
He grabbed one end of the huge arrow already piercing the monster and began to work it fiercely back and forth in the wound. The monster howled and spat and writhed some more and its gnarled hands began clutching and opening spasmodically and during one of the openings Cat came loose for just a second and Jack kicked his friend brutally to safety with a chain-mailed boot to the chest.
But it still had him, the little spitting fiend still had him and he could see the others shuffling closer, could hear the sound of their dry dead feet in the dust, could almost
“FELIXGODDAMMIT!” he wailed and grabbed the little monster and rolled over and over and flung it, with every ounce of fear he had, away from him.
There was the sound of chain mail popping, fabric and flesh ripping, and Jack Crow was free.
When he lurched triumphantly to his feet, Roy was there, face to rotting face. Roy hissed. His great black hands closed on Jack’s throat.
Jack was helpless and knew it and he hit the switch for his chest cross and the halogen light was blinding to both of them and painful to the vampire. It arched and shrieked from the agony of the cross of light, steam already rising from the surface of its dead skin.
It saved Jack’s life when it threw the light, and Jack, away from its body.
Jack smacked the concrete floor chest first and the halogen bulbs exploded into dusty darkness beneath him and suddenly all was as it had been only he had no light and no hope and Felix
He took one incredulous look then, pure hero type, braced his feet wide, supported his right, shooting, hand with his left, and began to fire. He was a sharpshooter. His first two hollowpoints struck Roy full in the chest. The next one struck the little impaled one, the thrashing one, in the left side of the head. The third shot blew a hole in the shoulder of an old woman, already lame, who had managed to drag herself within one more step of Adam without the young priest having yet seen her.
It was excellent shooting. The shots were dead-on accurate, spaced no more than a half second apart, and worthless against the undead.
They did have some effect. The vampires roared and jerked, the old woman after Adam was flung back briefly out of range, all eyes were turned to the deputy…
My God, thought Jack, staring at his gunman, he made a move!
And then Team Crow saw him start to draw.
Chapter 14
Felix’s first two shots, like the deputy’s, struck Roy. But while Kirk’s hit Roy’s chest, Felix’s slammed into his forehead. And while Kirk’s were .44 magnum hollowpoints, they were only lead. Felix’s were nine-millimeter silver blessed by the Vicar of Christ on Earth and they tore half-inch-wide holes through the skull. Roy shrieked and smacked his hands over the wounds and fell writhing to the cement.
But Felix didn’t see this. By the time Roy had fallen, Felix had already shot the old woman behind Adam twice, in the throat and the chest, had shot the small one on the crossbow once, in the stomach, and had put one shot each in the next three ghouls to emerge from the shadows: a high school teacher still wearing his shattered glasses, a middle-aged mother of three reported missing for two weeks, and a young drug dealer who waited too late one night to make a buy.
They were goons, still. All of them. Too recently dead to have thoughts or ideas or notions or sense of self. But they had always known hunger.
And now they remembered pain.
Searing, irredeemable agony shot through their wounds, wounds that would never heal. For a moment, the monsters forgot their prey, forgot the smell of blood, forgot their thirst. They thought only of the pain.
Felix strode forward during that instant, ejecting the clip with his right hand and snapping in a second with his left.
Then he worked a cartridge into the chamber, making all three actions appear, somehow, to be a single motion.
Like a robot, thought Cat at the time. Like a machine.
Felix paused in the center of the area lit by the two lanterns and briefly surveyed the tormented creatures surrounding him. Then he shot them some more. When the second clip was emptied and the third had replaced it, he stepped over to Cat.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice calm and unhurried.
And oddly kind, thought Cat, staring into those dead eyes.
Cat nodded.
“Can you get up and move?” asked Felix in the same tone.
Cat nodded again.
“Then let’s do it,” suggested the gunman, holding out a hand to help. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cat took the hand and pulled himself up. He still felt wobbly alter the pounding he had taken. But he was all right. Beside them Adam, who had been following it all, was also rising. The wound at his temple had stopped
