Vampire$

Anthony simply wouldn’t have this. “Show a little goddamn consideration, Jack!” he snorted and unfolded the kid from the cushion. Bambi rewarded Anthony by throwing his arms around the other’s neck, gurgling, “Thank ya, brother,” and vomiting onto his chest.

Anthony didn’t even get mad. He just took ’em both into what was left of the bathroom, cleaned them off, held Bambi’s head while be got sick in the tub. Then he carried him, still sobbing, in his arms back to the middle of the room and sat down and began to lecture everybody present about kindness, ending with two exquisitely pertinent statements:

“Showing a certain measure of respect and tenderness to your fellow human souls is the way a real man exhibits class” and “By the way, are the fucking bimbos gonna show up or not?”

The combination of statements sent Cat — long since returned and almost as long dead drunk — into a cackling frenzy. He held onto his sides and rolled back and forth kicking his feet.

The rest of the party stared at him in abject bewilderment. All, that is, except the sheriff. Ortega had been both stung and humiliated by the bimbo remark. Being sheriff, procurement was clearly his responsibility and them not showing up by now, almost 4:30, infuriated him.

But the telephone — that really enraged him. He’d been trying to call for two hours to see what the hold-up was but for the life of him he couldn’t get the sonuvabitch to work. He couldn’t even get a goddamned dial tone.

This in turn made David Deyo awfully guilty. Deyo, a member of the pike crew, had been responsible for tearing the phone out of the wall the first time hours earlier. A veteran of three years’ duty on the destroyer Hepburn, and therefore a man of breeding and culture, he had spent hours reconnecting the wires using his very best navy knot. But for some reason the phone still wouldn’t work.

A half-dozen of them got down on all fours to examine the situation. All agreed the knot was a thing of beauty and that the phone should by God phone. The real problem, of course, was that each of them had drunk enough to kill a steer. But this did not occur to anyone. Except maybe Cat, whose suddenly renewed cackling was a continuing mystery.

Somebody suggested using the phone in the next room. This was Cat’s turn to be helpful. “I’ll get it,” he screeched. He rose, reeling with laughter, and ricocheted into the adjoining bedroom, ripped out that phone and brought it in to be retied.

This one didn’t work either.

It was the phone company, everybody agreed. The phone company was fucked. And everybody had a drink to that.

It was starting to get really late. Only the hard core remained. Team Crow, three cops, including the sheriff, Father Hernandez, and Bambi. Somebody suggested going and getting the women, a Quest. That was cheered until somebody else pointed out that they were almost out of liquor.

One of the deputies reminded everybody of the time. The liquor store owner had long since locked up and gone home to bed. Then Ortega, desperate for redemption, allowed as how they had already robbed a bank, more or less, so knocking over a liquor store was no big deal.

“Whores first!” piped Bambi.

“I’m too drunk to fuck,” snarled Anthony, spilling Bambi onto his head and standing up.

Ortega stared at Anthony. “You’re kidding.”

“No kidding,” Anthony assured him. “I’m too drunk to do anything but drink.” He held up his index finger like a lecturer’s pointer. “And I gotta get sick first to do that. ’Scuse me.”

The spirit of comradeship rapidly degenerated into a squabble that sounded like two competing college cheering sections.

“Booze first!”

“No! Sex first!”

“Booze!”

“Sex!”

“Booze!”

“Sex!”

“Booze!”

Somebody yelled, “Less filling!” and got slapped around a great deal.

Then Bambi rose to the occasion. “I’ve got a van outside,” he piped gleefully. “We can go fill it full of both!”

“Yea!” shouted the crowd as Bambi took his bow, high-stepped carefully over to the door, opened it, and — And the vampire was on him and ripping his claws deep into his ribs and spreading them and then… it… pulled… his… chest… apart. Bambi died, screeching horror and spraying organs and blood and then clumped to the floor in a little pile and the vampire was on them, on the rest of them, coming at them too fast, too damn fast, too on fast to be believed, and the first guy, some member of the pike team, just had enough time to raise his forearm in front of his face before the fiend snapped it through and ripped him open from throat to shoulder and he screamed — Jesus God, how he screamed!

The bolts! Where’s the fucking crossbow? was all Crow could think and he spun around looking for it, taking his eyes off the fiend for a second because this was a vampire and that was the only way to stop it, the only way in the world and this was night! Nighttime and maybe that wouldn’t do it either but there it was, propped up against the end table under the lamp and Crow dove for it across the sofa full of horrified mortals, some of them just now rising to their feet because this was all so fast for them, this was just too… this couldn’t be happening, could it? I mean, we were just having a party and everything was just—

Crow crashed across the back of the sofa over the tops of somebody’s rising head and they flipped him sideways in the air in mid-dive and he came down right shoulder first onto the point of the bolt.

'God!” he gasped, as it sank into his tissue. He twisted to the side off of it and it tore loose raggedly from his skin and shirt. “God, God, God!” He was bleeding like crazy, agonizing pain, and the lamp teetered and fell to the carpet right beside his bead and started shorting out and then Crow rose to his knees blank-faced and beaten to watch the rest of the strobe-lit nightmare continue.

Darkness…

Light: David Deyo in mid-black-belt leap driving the side of his right foot picture-perfectly up under the vampire’s chin where the throat was soft and making the sound that would have popped the skull off any normal man—

Darkness…

Light: The fiend using David’s… oh, God! using his spine like a handle as he slammed him back and forth from the floor to the ceiling. David long dead already, all his bones crushed, flopping gruesomely and Anthony! Sweet Anthony with his huge shoulders slamming forward into the fiend, tackling him for chrissake like this was Astroturf and—

Darkness… And then crash in the blackness just a couple of feet away.

Light: Anthony’s body hanging on the sill of the shattered picture window and then sliding horribly, slowly, on through, his legs dragging the curtains pop-pop-pop — off the curtain rod to billow gently to the ground covering him and — Cat beside him, lifting him up, hissing, “Yes! Yes! Yes! The window!” as if that had been Anthony’s plan for escape all along.

“What…” stuttered Crow but he knew what Cat meant. They had to run. The fiend roared and slaughtered invincible in the night air. There was no chance, and he stumbled toward the window, Cat shoving him, grabbing him by the shoulder that already bled, and “Ohh!” spouted forth from Crow’s mouth with the pain and Cat said “Jack, you’re hurt!” in surprise and Crow mumbled back, “We’re all dead!”

And then more darkness and he was tumbling forward through the last of the glass and landing on something soft and dead like an old and trusted friend but not to think about it. He rose to his feet and turned for Cat, Cherry Cat, without whom there was no point anyway and — And it was light again for the last time and Cat was out and beside him and lifting him up and there — back there through the window was the priest, Father Hernandez, not nutless at all, stabbing the edge of his huge silver cross right into the fiend’s forehead before dying, decapitated, from a backhanded, almost casual, blow..

All blood and horror everywhere back there, on the walls and the ceiling and — And the sheriff, stunned