Vampire$

“Yes,” added Adam. “They are definitely waking up.”

“Let ’em,” snarled Jack Crow. He fixed the Team with a frosty stare. “It’s too late for ’em. We just stay a little tighter, work a little faster, be a little more careful. We still got ’em.”

They were right. From then on, every ghoul Felix had previously shot would scream that insane wail and rush him as soon as they saw him. There was no doubt they recognized him. No doubt they hated him.

But Jack Crow was also right. It was too late. The system worked. It worked on zombies or vampires or any combination of the two. Felix’s shooting was too quick. Jack’s crossbow was too accurate.

The only trouble spot came toward the end. They were getting tired, with some four hours at it by then, and due for a mistake. The mistake was Felix’s, and it was a beauty he dropped his gun during a charge.

First he slipped, in that awfully gooey stuff the monsters used for blood. It was a clear, viscous, odorless mucus that had been pouring from the wounds onto the cement and Felix made the mistake of stepping in it as he spun to shoot the third of the trio, which had rushed screaming out of the flare’s light toward them. When he went down, Felix’s right hand went out instinctively to catch himself and it went into another puddle of the junk and the pistol squirted out of his grip like a bar of soap.

Jack had already made his shot, the vampire already wriggling on the huge arrow, when it happened. He frantically fished for the pistol on his belt. Cat did the same and had actually managed to draw his pistol before Adam, calm and cool, stepped forward and fired his crossbow through the last monster’s chest. It dropped like meat on a spit.

Seconds later they were out watching another fire while Carl toweled the clinging mess from Felix’s hand and gun and everyone else exchanged proud grins with the young priest. It had been his only chance for action in hours and he had been flawless.

They felt good.

Nothing else even slowed them down. And only one thing actually frightened them again: going down into the basement.

The detectors said there were no more inside. Jack Crow believed them. They had already killed twenty- four and that was something like the third highest number Jack had ever seen in one place.

But they were still going to have to go down there and see for themselves.

And while they were sitting there trying to figure out the best way of going about it an old man wearing a faded pastor’s collar started across the street toward them. They had noticed him before and ignored him. Just another one of the local biggies come to oversee.

But as he got closer, they could tell this was no bigshot. The knees to his slacks were worn through. The lining of his jacket was hanging loose on one side. And he looked like he hadn’t shaved that white beard in a week.

He began to walk faster and faster as be approached them. He was carrying a piece of pipe in one hand, holding it in front of him like an offering. Jack had stood up to introduce himself, had even stuck out his hand to be shaken, in fact, when the old man swung the pipe at his head.

Jack half ducked but the pipe still banged him good on his left shoulder before glancing hard against his ear. Blood splattered from his ear and he reeled from the stunning ringing in his head and if he’d been alone the old man might have finished him off.

But he wasn’t alone. The old man was down hard on the street with the deputy handcuffing him within three seconds. The next minutes were spent bandaging up Jack’s ear and screaming at the local cops for an explanation as to just who in the hell let this crazy old fart in here, anyway?

That’s just Old Vic, they were told.

Who?

Old Vic Jennings. He’s just a crazy old coot lives down there by the railroad tracks. He’s an Englishman. Uh, ya’ll don’t wanna press charges or nothing, do you?

Jack stood up and pointed to the bandage covering the left side of his head. “I sure as Hell do!”

The cops looked back and forth between each other, shrugged, and tried to explain that “there’s kinda somewhat of a problem with that.”

Oh, really? Team Crow asked.

Jack looked down at Old Vic, who seemed delighted with all the attention. He was grinning a satisfied death’s-head grin at Jack. The two men exchanged silent looks while the Team heard the song and dance about being able to arrest him, okay! We can arrest him easy. Only they couldn’t put ’im in the jail on account of the jail being closed because of two prisoners we got down there got AIDS and we don’t wanna risk no epidemic thing.

Jack was listening as he stared at the old man’s grin and tried to keep from grinning back. He asked one question:

By whose order was the jail closed?

The mayor, he was told.

Jack nodded, told them to take the old man away anywhere they wanted — to the Hood County Jail, if necessary — but keep him away from Team Crow.

“Because,” he added, “we’ll be finished here in another hour and I don’t want anything to screw it up. Dig?”

They dug. They hauled Old Vic, still grinning, to a squad car. He had never, Jack suddenly realized, said a single word.

Didn’t have to, thought Jack, finally letting himself smile. He got what he wanted, attention, without it.

Thirty minutes later, Jack and his gunman were ready to hit the warehouse basement. Just the two of them.

Jack had fussed and fretted over the choice but he couldn’t think of another way to do it. He had to go; he was in charge. Felix had to go; he was too good. But what about backup?

Well, what about it? They were going after master vampires, the ones in charge, the ones who’d created the goons in the first place, and if they came across them in that narrow stairwell anything that was going to happen would crack too fast for anyone to stop it. Jack didn’t believe the masters were down there — they were in that goddamned jail — but if they were they might very well wipe out the entire Team. This way there’d at least be somebody left to do it the old-fashioned way, with plastique.

And besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted a lot of trigger-happy well-meaners shooting off pistols and crossbows past his head.

No. Just him and Felix would go down, with both halogen crosses blazing from their chests. Felix first.

Crow felt the last part deserved an explanation but Felix didn’t need one. Felix didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Gunman first made sense to him too. Then Jack tried to explain about master vampires, the real live movie types that could throw cars and move so fast they literally blurred, but he didn’t think he had the gunman’s attention.

“You’re saying they’re worse, right?” Felix interrupted at last, sounding irritated and bored.

Jack just nodded.

Felix nodded in turn. “I figured that,” he whispered harshly. “Now let’s get on with it!”

They did.

The rich, rotten-sweet smell of death and decay rose up to them from the dark basement stairs through the harsh smoky halogen beams. Jack nodded one last time to Cat and Adam, who would wait there on the first-floor battleground for them. Then he touched Felix on the shoulder and the gunman started down the steps. There was no trouble on the way down, save for their occasional starts and jumps at some imagined movement at the edges of the shadows. The detector never beeped, their radios retained clear and crisp reception.

But it scared the hell out of both of them.

The stairwell was too goddamned narrow and the shadows too goddamned dark and the smell grew so strong they felt they could lean against it and their boots sounded harsh and rasping on the dusty steps and they couldn’t help but notice the scores of other footprints besides their own. The basement was worse.

It was a crypt. Nine bodies in all — six townspeople and the three policemen who had gone inside to save them. Their bodies were rank and swollen, unevenly, grotesquely bloated. And there were maggots. Thousands of