The Mammoth Book of Dracula (92 page)

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what I
want...
just that—”

“And if I don’t, you’ll shoot me ... just like you did Solly, right?”

Blaumlein nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.” He laughed now, and Deedee and the old man started laughing along with him. “That’s right, gramps, we’ll
shoot
you. Hell, we’ll shoot
all
of yous if’n we have to.”

Tom shrugged and turned away. “Let’s get going then,” he said over his shoulder. As he started walking, the other townsfolk fell into step behind.

Billy stepped into the single file behind his mother and in front of Eleanor Revine. Blaumlein waited a step or two and then followed on. Billy heard him issuing instructions to the others and he saw the old man appear on the right, holding some kind of wide-barrelled pistol, while on the left Blaumlein’s wife rode point with the rifle, accompanied by the boy, who seemed to have no other weapon but a long-shafted axe.

Nobody spoke. The only sound was the gentle
swish swish,
as they moved through the longer grasses up the hill, and an occasional hoot and a flurry of wings from the distant trees.

Soon, they had reached the top of the rise.

The old man, who had moved up to the front, reached across and grabbed hold of Tom Duffy’s sleeve. Everyone stopped. The old man ran crouched over and disappeared down the other side of the hill.

While they waited, Billy stepped out of line and moved back behind Eleanor Revine to Blaumlein. “That wasn’t no vampire, was he?”

Blaumlein shook his head. “Nope.” He kept his eyes trained on the brow of the hill, waiting for the old man to return and tell him everything was okay.

“Who was he?”

Blaumlein shook his head again. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he said. “We found him up in Carolina, drinking the blood out of a mangy dog, dead by the side of the road. Can’t speak ... or
won’t
speak. There’s a lot of folks like that out there.” He shifted the gun to his other hand and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “It was Deedee thought up the vampire shtick. Pat—he’s the fella with the pipe—he fashioned us a couple of teeth and we just fixed them right on him. Worked, too, in most places we been ...”

“But not here,” Billy said.

Blaumlein nodded. “But not here.”

“So he isn’t really Count Dracula either?”

“Dracula’s a myth, kid ... a fairy story. Once we’d hit on the vampire idea, Pat said why don’t we go the whole hog and call him Dracula ... the
last
vampire.” He laughed but it was without humour. “Most places, people just want to see something that entertains them. Something a little out of the ordinary.”

“What about the other things? The triplets ... and the empty eggs?”

“Oh, they’re real enough. There’re a lot of things out the—”

“Joe?”

Blaumlein looked up towards the front of the line. The old man, Pat, was waving his arms.

“Yeah?”

“Looks okay,” Pat said. “Hill runs down to a big old shack—there’s a light on in there, so there must be some kind of generator hooked up. Making a noise, too.”

Blaumlein started to move up the line. “Get in place, kid,” he snapped. “Deedee, get back here and watch the rear.”

The woman walked back, keeping her rifle trained on the townsfolk.

When he got to the front of the line, Blaumlein pulled Tom Duffy towards him by the shirt-front. “What’s down there, gramps?”

“I told you. Provisions. Our food and our water.”

“What’s the noise?”

“He already told you,” Duffy said, nodding at the old man with the pipe. “It’s a generator ... keeps it all fresh.”

“The food.”

Duffy nodded. “The food.”

“There ain’t nothing you’re holding back here, is there gramps?”

“Like what?”

“Like some kind of electric fence or some other protective doodad?”

Duffy sighed. “It’s just for the food.”

“Right, just the food.” Blaumlein pushed the deputy mayor forward and stepped in line behind him. “Well, you lead the way, then. Pat, move down towards the back... and keep an eye on them.”

“Got it.” Pat ran down the left of the column, his pipe still in his mouth, jiggling up and down.

“Eddie, you just keep watching, okay?”

Eddie grunted.

“And if you see anything even a
little
bit cute, just call out, okay?”

“Okay.”

Blaumlein prodded Tom Duffy. “Let’s go, gramps.”

They moved slowly down the hill, stepping sideways-on until they came to the bottom and the edge of a huge field. Up ahead, in the centre, stood a barn, two storeys with a light shining through the dirty windows. Blaumlein knelt down and felt the plant by his feet. “Cabbage? Is this a cabbage?”

He stood up. “Pat? Get down here.”

The old man came running down the hill.

“This look like a cabbage to you?”

Pat knelt down and pulled a couple of leaves. He ground them in his hand and took a sniff. “Looks like cabbage to me,” he said, breathlessly.

Blaumlein turned to survey the whole field. Even in the moonlight, he could see there were thousands of them, all laid out in rows. He looked around at Tom Duffy. “Is this it, mister deputy fucking mayor? Is this your food? Cabbages?”

Tom half-nodded. “It’s what we use to make our food.”

“Make your food?” Blaumlein looked out at the barn. “What you got in there, a million gallons of cabbage soup?”

“Something like that,” said Tom Duffy.

Blaumlein gave a small smile but something else was tugging at the ends of it, pulling down the forced mirth and narrowing the man’s eyes with tiny rays of concern. “What the hell does that mean?”

The deputy mayor returned the smile and looked around at the other townsfolk. Their faces were watching Blaumlein. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Blaumlein turned around and looked across the field at the barn. “Pat?”

The old man stepped alongside him. “What do you think?”

Pat shrugged. “Looks okay. Looks like a barn. What are you thinking?”

“I dunno.” He looked at Tom Duffy and sensed a calm strength in the man. He didn’t like it. Truth was, he suddenly didn’t like any of it. For a second, he was going to say as much

let’s give ‘em a break and leave ‘em to it

but he didn’t. He glanced at Pat who was watching the side of his face. He chuckled. “Pat, I’m not thinking any damned thing, not any damned thing at all. Let’s go take a look.”

Pat fell back to the side of the line and checked that everyone was still in place.

There were five women and eight men, plus the kid pulling up the rear. A real jumble of walking wounded, drained of stamina and bereft of soul. Pat smiled. For a few seconds there, he’d been worried. There had been something in Joe Blaumlein’s voice, something he couldn’t quite place ... like a fly whose buzz you could hear but which you couldn’t see no matter how still you stood. He looked back and waved to Deedee. She lifted the rifle with both hands a couple of times and then returned it to point at the ones at the back of the line.

Across the column, between the deputy mayor’s wife, a sweet-looking woman of around sixty or maybe a little younger, and a young man in his early twenties, Eddie was prowling to and fro, a few steps each time, swinging the long-handled axe like it was a golf club.

“Let’s go,” Blaumlein shouted from the front. “Slow now,” he said, “and no funny business.”

Pat watched as Joe pulled the old man forward and then stepped in behind him. He jammed the gun in his back. “Try anything, and you’re the first one that gets it.” The words had been softly spoken but the night was so still, despite a gentle breeze, that they carried back to Pat.

As they started to move off, Pat turned slightly to check that Deedee was okay. As he moved his head, he caught sight of someone watching him. It was a woman—maybe forty years old; Pat couldn’t tell—and he thought it was the kid’s mother. Her face was smiling ... her whole face, not just her mouth. Pat didn’t like that. It looked eager, like it was getting ready for something.

“Face the front!” Pat snarled. The woman’s smile fell away and she jerked her head around. Pat felt better. There was nothing on that face—
had
been nothing on that face. Must just’ve been the moon, playing tricks with her expression.

They moved forward slowly, picking their way between the cabbages. Pat and Eddie stayed well out to either side while Deedee brought up the rear, stepping out first one way and then the other, just a few steps at a time, to make sure everyone was behaving themselves. They were. Pat could see that. They were behaving themselves

too fucking well

just absolutely fine.

The barn grew larger, its shine growing brighter. Staring over the old man’s shoulder, crouched down so’s nobody could blow off the top of his head, Joe Blaumlein scanned the structure for any movements ... any signs of life at all. There weren’t any. It was just a barn. A
big
barn, but still a barn.

When they had got out of sight of the sides of the barn, with only the big doors facing them, Blaumlein pulled out of line and ran towards the entrance. He flattened himself against the side-panels, shuffled along to the corner and peered down the side. Nobody there. Had he expected anybody? He couldn’t say ... couldn’t decide. Something in his stomach was expecting something, that was for sure.

He looked back and saw that the column had come to a stop just a few feet in front of the doors. They were all watching him, the townsfolk and Pat, Eddie and Deedee, too. Waiting for an instruction.

“Okay, open the doors,” Blaumlein shouted. “And remember ...” He let his voice trail off and simply waved the gun. The old deputy mayor nodded and stepped forward, taking hold of the single wooden beam dropped into the two brackets—one on each door—and lifting it clear. He was strong for a little guy, Blaumlein thought. And a little
old
guy, at that.

Setting the beam on the ground, Tom Duffy took hold of the doors, one handle in each hand, and pulled. The doors came towards him effortlessly, creaking like the old iron doors to some hidden castle vault.

Or crypt!

Blaumlein frowned as he watched the old man continue pulling. Where had the word “crypt” come from, for crissakes?

The doors were fully open now, and Blaumlein could see vague shapes behind some kind of shimmering window. He stepped forward as the little deputy mayor stepped back. It was some kind of plastic sheeting, Blaumlein now saw, hanging down from a polished rail attached to a series of criss-crossed wooden beams.

“Meet the Mayor of Pump Handle,” Tom Duffy announced in a strikingly formal tone as he waved an arm lavishly towards the doors.

The townsfolk began to move forward arid there was little for their guards to do but move with them. Soon they were all standing in front of the plastic sheeting, Pat, Eddie and Deedee mingled in amongst them, all staring into the barn.

Tom Duffy reached a hand around the door and fumbled with something on the wall behind. A heavy droning noise started up and the sheeting began to move to the left.

“Mr Mayor?” Duffy called. “You have visitors.”

Blaumlein took a step forward into the barn.

The building comprised a single room, about two storeys high with a mezzanine balcony floor, accessed by a rickety-looking stepladder at the rear, running the full circumference.

Around the underside of the balcony, ran a long metal rail. Attached to the rail by large brass rings was the plastic sheeting which had now drawn fully back from the doors. Alongside the rail, intermittent fluorescent light tubes cast a vague glow whose full intensity failed to escape the constriction of the enclosed space.

The centre of the room fared better, thanks to four circular fluorescents on a square of suspended board hanging from the raftered roof. Directly beneath the board sat a large rectangular wooden table. On and alongside the table were all manner of complicated-looking pieces of machinery of varying sizes, some of them blinking red or green or yellow lights, like swarms of fireflies trapped forever in one spot, endlessly winking either to attract help or to warn off others.

But it was what was hanging between the table and the lights that finally caused Blaumlein to step further into the barn, closely followed by his companions and the townsfolk.

Harnessed by a complex series of ropes and crude pulleys attached to the board of lights, the naked body of a man hung, moving gently in the breeze from the open door.

The head of the man was nearest the door. It hung back and down, lolling, on a scrawny neck, eyes open and staring straight at Blaumlein.

“Don’t you fret none, now,” Tom Duffy said reassuringly. “He’s dead ... or, at least, he’s not alive as we know it.”

“Who is he? What... what are you doing to him?”

Blaumlein made the final few steps to stand so that his face was on a level with that of the suspended man. He stared at the apparatus and grimaced. The man’s chest and abdomen had been cut open, thick folds of skin pierced by fine-tined s-shaped meathooks attached to a circular rail about two feet above the body.