Authors: Rich Hawkins
CHAPTER TWENT
Y
ONE
Mason swung the torch around the attic and tensed himself for something awful to emerge from the dark; but instead the light revealed VHS tapes of action films from the Eighties in cardboard boxes, and bin bags of baby toys. There were thick books in dusty stacks. Trinkets and old ornaments. Halloween masks and paper plates. Forgotten things. A large mound of musty old blankets and cloth sacks rose from the middle of the floor.
Pete helped the soldier sit down. He winced as he laid out his leg then rolled back the trouser leg to his shin and gently pawed at the swollen, reddened skin around his ankle.
Mason and Pete sat opposite the soldier and watched him. The floorboards muffled the clatter and thumping of the men searching the house. Mumbled voices. Scrapes and bumps, creaks and knocks. Footsteps ascended the stairs and wandered through the rooms below them.
“He couldn’t have got far,” a man’s voice said right beneath them on the landing. “Not with an injured ankle. Bastard squaddie.”
Mason hoped they didn’t notice the attic hatch; or thought it unworthy of investigation if they did. He switched off the torch, and the three of them waited in the silent dark while the men returned outside to search other places.
“Thank fuck for that,” Pete whispered, sighing.
Mason flicked on his torch. Pete did the same. The sudden light stung Mason’s eyes. In the colliding beams the soldier’s face was sickly white as he stared at the large mound of blankets and sacks.
Mason followed his gaze with the torch. The mound was trembling and rustling.
“What the hell…?”
A naked old man emerged crawling from within the mound, his eyes gleaming in the torchlight. His face contorted into a snarl; sharp teeth jutted from the bloodstained horror of his mouth. His body was sagging and withered.
“You’ve come to play with me,” the old man said, grinning. “You’ve come to play with me on my birthday.”
“Oh fuck,” said Pete. “It’s Uncle Fester.”
*
They fought at close-quarters in the semi-darkness, the old man swiping his clawed hands at them and hissing like a lizard. Torch beams swayed and fell. Scrambling movements and grunted breaths.
They finally dispatched the vampire when Pete pulled a blanket over his head and dragged him to the floor. And while the old man kicked and thrashed and tried to break free, Mason knelt beside him, and with Pete’s knife stabbed the old man in the head multiple times until he stopped struggling and dark blood began to bleed through the gouges in the blanket.
The soldier watched them without emotion. “Good work.”
*
They waited in silence until Pete thought it was safe to climb down from the attic. Despite his reluctance to leave the comparative safety of the attic, Mason was glad to leave behind the stinking remains of the undead old man.
They descended to the upstairs landing. Mason glanced out the window at the dusk falling over the town.
“We won’t get back to the church before dark,” he said.
Pete looked outside then checked his pistol. He wiped his mouth. “Looks like we’re having a sleepover.”
*
With the light bleeding from the sky they barricaded the doors and closed the curtains. They holed up in the living room, where there wasn’t as much blood as in the other downstairs rooms. Pete pushed a mattress flat against the living room window; it was a paltry defence against a vampire attack, but it was better than nothing.
Mason glanced at the framed photos of the family who had, until last night, lived here in relative comfort. The bloodstains in the kitchen and the hallway told an awful end to that story.
The soldier lay across the sofa, his injured ankle raised on two cushions stacked upon each other. He sipped from a bottle of water and avoided eye contact with Mason and Pete, who sat on the floor and against the opposite wall, facing him. They had questions for him that would have to be answered eventually.
Mason had found a candle, and lit it against the darkness. A long night awaited them, and they would wait in the shabby little room until sunrise.
*
“I think you owe us an explanation,” Mason said to the soldier. “Who are you?”
The soldier looked at the floor and swallowed. He let out a slow breath. “Corporal Tom Bluth.”
“Pleased to meet you, Corporal. Now please enlighten us as to what the fuck is happening. The quarantine was put in place very, very quickly. As if the army knew what was happening before the public had even the slightest clue.”
Bluth didn’t look at Mason. He was wringing his hands.
“It would be polite to answer, Corporal,” said Pete. “We did save your life today, if you remember.”
“I remember.”
“Good,” said Pete.
“Did you get left behind?” Mason asked.
Bluth looked up at them. “No.”
“Elaborate, Corporal.”
“I led a squad into the town on the first night. Strictly recon, with orders not to engage the creatures or interact with civilians, and then report back. There were four of us. Gibbs and Webster were taken by the creatures. Foster and myself were caught by that lynch mob. I managed to escape, but he didn’t, as you saw.”
Pete placed his hand near the pocket holding his pistol. “Does the army know how this all started? I saw a few army vehicles passing through town the day before the quarantine.”
Bluth stared at the floor. “I’m just a grunt.”
“If you know something, tell us,” said Mason.
“I’ve only heard rumours.”
“What rumours?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can, Corporal. Help us out here. We saved your life. You owe us something, at least, even if it is just rumours.”
Bluth looked away from him and sighed, then ran his hands over his face. “King Carrion.”
Mason felt his heart falter. “What?”
“Like I said, it’s a rumour.” Bluth leaned forward. “I heard that the military found something buried deep in the ground. In some sort of tomb. A hibernating creature. A vampire.” He paused, looked at Mason.
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Apparently they brought it to a military base a few miles away from here. It’d been there for several months until it woke up, and then escaped…”
“And came here,” Pete said.
Bluth nodded. “That’s what I heard.”
Mason remembered the thing of shadows and rags he’d encountered on the night Calvin and Zeke died. The creature that danced with Ellie in his dreams.
King Carrion. The vampire King…
“So what do the military plan to do now they’ve quarantined the town?” asked Mason. “More firebombing? Scorched earth? Wipe the town from the map?”
Bluth didn’t meet his eyes. “Depends how bad things get.”
“I think things are already bad enough,” said Pete.
“So, there’s no chance of rescue?” Mason said.
“I can’t give you an answer,” said Bluth. “I’m just a fucking squaddie and I’m in exactly the same position as both of you. They won’t let me out of the town now.”
“We’re pretty fucked, then,” said Pete.
No one replied. There was just silence inside the little room.
CHAPTER TWENT
Y
TWO
The candle died not long after midnight, and they sat shivering in the dark of the house as the vampires stalked the streets outside. Horrific screams and shrieks accompanied cruel laughter and the dwindling cries of the hunted. Staccato gunshots lasted for a few minutes then faded away, to be replaced by the drone of a reconnaissance helicopter.
Mason wondered what would be done about the diseased town once the government and military had worked through their scenarios and plans. The vampires would not be allowed to spread, no matter the cost. Civilian lives were expendable. Collateral damage. If need be, the town would be bombed out of existence, reduced to a smoking crater in south Somerset.
He imagined what was happening on the streets as he hid in this little room. More attacks. More converts. More vampires. And soon the number of survivors would be down to a handful.
King Carrion.
He thought of Ellie for a long while, and pictured her as something carnivorous and without mercy. It reduced him to tears.
He fell asleep with those tears still upon his face.
*
He dreamed the same dream of Ellie and the figure in the cloth mask. But now Ellie spoke its name with the reverence reserved for a god. They danced in the same cavernous room with the same audience of monsters. And then King Carrion, the thing of rags, released her and she crawled into the dark to commune with her brothers and sisters of blood.
Come to me, Mason,
her voice called from the shadows.
We can be together again. Cease your fighting against the converted ones. Be at peace and accept what is inevitable.
A pause, and then:
I still love you, my husband.
*
Mason woke and pawed at his throat to check for wounds. He slumped and exhaled, then grabbed the bottle beside him and sank most of the water inside. He sat there gasping, heart crashing and irregular, sweating under the blanket around his shoulders.
Pete and the soldier were still asleep. Mason rose stiffly, groaning and sighing, and went to the mattress against the window and pushed it to let in the first light of morning around the edges of the closed curtains. He peered outside, squinting at tepid sunlight as a wave of relief passed through him at surviving the night. But then he remembered the dream and the words Ellie had spoken. And a great swell of longing for his wife consumed him until he sagged with his back against the wall and bowed his head.
*
They left the house to watch the sun rise above the town. They moved through back streets, watchful and jittery, glancing up and down narrow roads and past grey buildings.
Mason found a short-handled axe discarded on the road, and stopped to pick it up. Its blade was encrusted with dried blood. He kept it with him.
“Good find,” said Pete.
The swelling in Bluth’s ankle had lessened, and he was able to walk with only Mason supporting him. He smelled of stale sweat and old vinegar. Pete walked in front with the pistol at his side.
They passed a man in white underpants loitering in a doorway with a bottle of supermarket brand lemonade clutched to his chest. He cackled to himself when they looked towards him. He was a shrivelled thing.
“The monsters took more of us last night,” he said, with a witless glaze in his eyes. “Soon we’ll all be bloodsuckers!”
Pete glared at the man for a moment then turned away.
After that, they encountered no one else on the streets. Mason looked up to the blue sky hazy with cloud. Winter sun, cold breeze, chill air.
The town was silent and dead.
*
They found the church doors hanging from their hinges, and when they stepped inside the air was spoiled with coppery blood and offal. The morning light spilled through the doorway and revealed the broken, mangled shapes and wet meat left out for them. Further inside the nave there was a deeper stench of rancid dairy and rotten eggs.
The people in the church had been slaughtered. Mason, Pete and the soldier stared at the remains strewn around and upon the pews and the floor. Headless bodies arranged on the benches, with heads placed on their laps. Severed arms and legs. Hearts stolen from chest cavities and smeared over the walls. Frothing viscera. Blood had dripped down the back of pews to pool on the stone floor. The head of a little girl had been planted on a metal candleholder. Her face was frozen in sheer terror and pain. Her mouth was stuffed with communion wafers.
Bluth hunched over and dry heaved. When he straightened, his face was beaded with sweat and taut with what looked like shame or guilt.
Pete sat down on an empty pew and bowed his head. He looked at the pistol. “They came here in the night. Fucking leeches.”
Mason walked up the aisle, glancing at the bodies to either side of him, and stopped before the altar, where ropey intestines and sloppy flaps of flesh were strewn around its base. The altar frontal had been torn aside. Upon the front of the altar, a name had been scrawled in blood.
KING CARRION
His eyes drifted to the top of the altar. He tried to speak, but the words crumbled silently out of his mouth. And he reached out and picked up Ellie’s wedding ring from atop the altar. He didn’t need to read the inscription on the inside, but he did, and it moved him to tears to see the words he’d given to her to mark their union.
He put the ring in his pocket.
It had been left here for him, as a warning, a promise, or a reminder that Ellie would wait for him until he relented and joined the converted.
He was startled when a faint, wavering and indistinct voice drifted out of the shadows at the back of the chancel beyond the altar. He froze. Pete walked up the aisle. Bluth followed, using the edges of the wooden benches for support.
“Did you hear that?” said Mason, gripping his axe.
Pete nodded. “A survivor?”
Bluth looked at them. “Or a trap.”