“Hmm,” muttered Carl to himself. “Did he aim?”
Cat stared at him. “Did he what?”
Adam spoke up. “I know what Carl means. No. He didn’t. He just sort of… pointed?”
Carl grinned and nodded. “I knew it! Only uses one hand, too, right?”
Adam nodded.
Carl laughed. “I knew it,” be repeated. “It’s why he uses that tiny gun. It’s the heaviest thing he can use with one hand.” He stood and carried the first-aid kit back to his chair by the winch controls. “We got ourselves a gunman.”
Jack Crow hadn’t given a damn about the light. He had just wanted to get Felix alone. Oh, he went through the motions, finding two lanterns in their storage chest in the motorhome’s bedroom. And he made sure they both worked, replacing the battery in one.
And then he got ready to talk.
Only, sitting there at the table with Felix blankly across from him, he didn’t really know what to say. Or ask.
Finally, “You all right?” he blurted, too loudly.
Felix didn’t startle. He just raised his eyes and looked at him.
“I mean,” Jack amended, “are you ready to go back in?”
Felix’s voice was soft. “Sure.”
Jack still wasn’t satisfied. “What woke you up in there?”
Felix thought a moment. “I’m not sure. The deputy’s gun, I think.”
And they were quiet for a while.
“Think it’ll happen to you again?” asked Crow gently.
Felix’s smile was so sad it hurt Jack to look at it as he said, “No. That part’s over.”
“Okay,” replied Jack gruffly. Because he didn’t know what else to say.
Chapter 15
At the last minute they decided to go with flares instead of more lanterns. Lanterns were a more steady light, but they couldn’t figure out a safe way to carry them as far into the darkness as Felix wanted.
Only they didn’t have any flares and they weren’t at all sure the local cops would give them any.
Deputy Kirk Thompson was sure.
“
They couldn’t hear what he said to them. But they got the tone.
And they got their flares. The deputy had three dozen delivered to them within five minutes.
“So,” said Jack Crow as they assembled before the warehouse once more. “We’re all set. Rock and roll!”
And as he led the Team inside he thought: Please, Felix! Don’t fold on us again!
He didn’t. Felix was, if anything, more impressive the second time. He was cool and calm and deadly accurate, and the closest monster to them was the one Jack picked to crossbow, Roy.
Roy was as big and strong as he looked. But not as strong as the winch. Not with Felix continually, mercilessly, shooting him. By the time he’d been dragged to the sunlight, Roy had forgotten all about the stake through his chest. And then it was too late.
They waited five minutes and went in again and got another, as easily as the last. Then they did it again. And again and again and again. The crowd watching them began to grow as their success continued, some of the policemen going so far as to actually stand just behind Carl’s winch to watch.
Carl ignored them. So did the others.
They always followed the same procedure. Jack led them in, then they fanned out on either side of him into position. Felix would light a flare, toss it way into the shadows at the edge of their lanterns, and begin to shoot everything that moved but the one Jack had picked to stake. After Jack made his shot, the others would fade back toward the door while Felix kept the rest at bay. They would all exit with the burning vampire. Then a sip of something cool, a quick puff on a cigarette, and back they’d go.
And then the vampires began to change.
There were only a handful left, most of them shot several times, and they weren’t moving much. Some weren’t even on their feet. Not dead, not nearly dead, but hurting.
And waking up.
It was the pain, decided Adam. The pain was shocking them back into consciousness after the zombie- limbo of death. Whatever, they were no longer the same. And their eyes were no longer just the blank thirst-stare. They were alert. And angry.
They found this out on their sixth trip inside the building. It started off just like the other times, Crow in first, followed by the others fanning to either side of him. There were no goons in sight, which wasn’t especially unusual. But Cat’s detector showed nothing approaching and that was strange.
Felix tossed a flare anyway, flinging it with a long side arm to avoid the low ceiling.
It landed on a vampire.
It was a young woman in her early thirties. She was wearing boots, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt advertising “ZZ Top’s North American Tour.” Felix remembered that sweatshirt. He had put at least three silver bullets through it that day.
The woman had been lying there in the dust, unmoving, when the flare landed on her chest. She sprang to her feet, yelping and brushing wildly at the flame flickering from her sweatshirt. Then, once she was free of the fire, she stopped.
And looked at them.
And then she felt the bullet holes in her chest.
And then she looked right at Felix. Right at the gunman.
And then she let out an awful shrieking cry, like a satanic infant’s tantrum, and ran straight at Felix, the source of her anguish.
Felix shot her twice more, without thinking. Both bullets struck her high in the chest, flipping her over backward. After she hit, she lay still.
“Good Lord,” whispered Cat harshly, “I think you killed her!”
“Does anybody remember how many shots it took?” asked Adam. “Felix?”
“Hold it, goddamniit! Cat! Anything else coming?”
Cat bent over his detector. “Not yet,” he replied.
“Okay, then,” Jack announced. “We can afford to wait a bit to see if she’s really…”
She wasn’t. The second wailing was even worse than the first. And her scrambling headlong charge for the gunman was even quicker. Felix’s startled third shot was from the hip. It struck her in the left thigh and she cartwheeled forward onto her shoulder…
Then leapt back to her feet and came at him again, right at him, shrieking that shriek, and bounding on that shattered left thigh.
Their eyes had met before Felix managed to shoot her again, this time in the exact center of her pulsing throat.
She slammed backward into the dust, writhing and flinging that mad baby’s cry all around her.
Jack made a quick decision. He stepped over in front of Felix and raised the crossbow.
“That tears it,” he barked gruffly. “We’re taking this one.”
And they did. When next she rose, Jack’s crossbow almost folded her in half.
But it held and the cable held and a few seconds later they were watching her burn just as all the rest had.
No one moved after the fire was out. They just stood there.
“She knew you,” cat said at last, looking at Felix. “She knew you were the one who’d hurt her.”
Felix took a long puff on his cigarette, nodded.
