Vampire Lord 6 Chapter 11

“We haven’t gone to look at the message from Black Betsy ourselves,” Natalie said as she started to walk toward the church door.

“Yeah, we decided it was better to wait for you so we could all go look together.” Neko pushed the door open and held it for us as we all filed out into the still damp street.

The clouds had finally started to dissipate, and small sections of bright blue sky peeked out between the rolling gray mass. The ground was still wet, and I could see the storm had done plenty of damage here in town, too. Large chunks of tree branches littered the street further down past the general store, and an empty field just past Duke’s Diner looked like a literal swamp. That was good information to have, though. I suspected we wouldn’t want to plant any crops in that spot, but I had confidence Gary and Jason would give me all necessary data when we could finally start to deal with less life threatening problems and get into more serious planning for the future.

I looked back over my shoulder down the main road that led to the western barricade and noticed some power lines had been torn from their poles, and now they lay along the edge of the street. I made a mental note to have somebody clear them away because while we wouldn’t need them for power, we also definitely didn’t want them laying around just in case power ever did come back on unexpectedly. Surging live power lines in the middle of the street was a pretty damn good recipe for disaster, and I’d like to avoid any disaster we could prevent as much as possible.

“So, if you haven’t seen this message yourselves, how do you know about it?” I asked as I turned my attention back to the problem at hand.

“Lieutenant Perkins came up to the church about an hour ago,” Natalie started to explain. “He said a pick up truck with three vamps drove up close enough to the barricade for him and Ross to see them dump something in the middle of the street.”

“He said they were pretty sure it was a couple of bodies,” Neko murmured, and a deep crease marred the soft skin between her dark eyebrows.

“Shit,” I muttered as we continued to walk down the street toward the eastern barricade. “Did Perkins say if those fanged fucks did anything else?”

“No.” My beautiful girlfriend shook her head, and her chestnut ponytail swayed with the motion. “Lieutenant Perkins said they backed up toward the barricade, one vamp dumped the bodies out of the back of the truck, and then they just drove off without a word.”

“Well, let’s have a look see.” I clenched my fists where they swung lightly at my sides as we strode up to the barricade.

“Good morning, sir,” Perkins said as he stood tall and offered me a respectful salute. “Come to see the situation, I take it?”

“It’s pretty nasty,” Ross added, and he nodded politely at the seven women who surrounded me like my own personal sexy secret service detail.

“Where are they?” Valerie asked.

“We left them right where those bastards dumped them,” Perkins answered, and then he flushed only slightly. “If you’ll excuse my language, ladies.”

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant.” Natalie smiled kindly at the retired soldier. “We’ve seen and heard plenty since all of this began.”

“Yeah, and we fucking say it, too,” Catherine giggled quietly to Erika.

“Shh!” Erika hushed her auburn-haired friend with a conspiratorial smile.

“Come on, Perkins,” Ross said, and he stepped over to the edge of the barricade. “Let’s show the boss.”

“Thank you,” Natalie said to the dark-haired vet, and then she shot me a quick smirk as she mouthed ‘boss’ at me.

“It’s Lieutenant,” Perkins corrected Ross, but he followed the younger man, and together, they pulled the barricade aside. “I outrank you, sonny.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ross sighed with exasperation, and he rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “But if I have to refer to you by your rank, then you should call me Staff Sergeant Ross.”

“Wait a second,” Brianna spoke up. “Ross isn’t your first name?”

“No,” the Staff Sergeant chuckled, and he smiled at the pretty blonde. “Ross is my last name. My first name is Eric.”

“Well, shit,” Catherine said, and she grinned. “Everything I thought I knew is a lie.”

“Come along, they’re over here,” Perkins said. Then he led us another fifty feet past the barricade, and he pointed to four bodies that lay in a heap like garbage in the middle of the street.

The bodies looked like they’d been fairly nice, average people only a few weeks ago. I could only tell by their clothing and the length of their hair that the bodies were of two women, probably in their mid to late thirties, a man in his forties, and a younger male who looked like maybe he’d been about my age. They wore casual clothes, jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts, pretty ordinary based on what I’d see the people in Red House wear around town, and there were huge rust-colored stains of dried blood on their collars. I could see more than a few bite marks on their wrists and forearms, and their throats were nearly ripped completely away from their torsos.

Flesh hung around their collarbones like tattered crepe paper. Their bodies were piled in a tangled heap of broken limbs and twisted spines, and the dead, vacant eyes of the older male stared up at us from where his neck lay at an unnatural angle on the ground. It looked like those fanged assholes in Black Betsy hadn’t been very tidy with their meals, or they’d intentionally mangled these poor bastards more than usual for my benefit. There was a wrinkled piece of paper stapled hastily to the cheery yellow shirt of one of the females, and across it someone had scrawled four words with a half dried out red Sharpie.

“‘We’re coming for you,’” Lily read the words aloud, and a shudder raced down her spine.

“Good, let them come.” I grimaced with determination at the mangled corpses by my feet.

“They deserve a proper burial, sir,” Lieutenant Perkins told me in a solemn voice.

“Yes, they do,” I agreed. “Does the town have a cemetery?”

“There’s a small graveyard out behind the church,” Valerie answered, and she swiped her bangs away from her eyes. “It’s almost entirely soldiers from the Civil War, but there’s plenty of space.”

“That will do,” I said, and I turned to Ross and the lieutenant. “Will you take care of that for me? Stop by the general store and have the next pair come out for guard duty, we’ll stay here at the barricade until they arrive. Then enlist a few others to help you dig proper graves if you have to, and mark them with stones or something. ”

“Yes, sir.” Perkins nodded stiffly, and he stood tall under the weight of my orders. “You can count on me, sir.”

“Come on, buddy. Mark and Jerry’ll be next on guard duty.” Ross patted the retired soldier on the shoulder and started to lead him back through the barricade. “I’d bet my pension they’re in the diner. Let’s grab ‘em and then find Mary Bess, see if we can’t borrow her back loader to get this job done.”

“That’s a fine idea, Staff Sergeant…” Perkins’ voice faded as they walked back into town.

“I think I’d need exactly one guess to figure out who this message is from,” Neko said a moment later as she stared down at the poor humans who’d been sucked dry and left to rot on our doorstep.

“Big fat Thaddeus would be my guess,” Natalie said, and she looked up at me with wide blue eyes.

“What do we do now?” Brianna asked, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

“We prepare,” I answered, and my hands clenched into tight fists by my side. “This is good, though. We wanted them to come to us, we wanted home turf advantage, and now we’re gonna have it. First things first, we need to go collect the rest of the supplies from the jeep that we couldn’t carry back the first time.”

“We’ll go, Sam,” Brianna volunteered and looped her arm through Neko’s.

“Definitely,” Neko agreed, and her faded-pink hair bounced around her face as she nodded her head.

“I’ll go with you, I need to stretch my legs.” Lily stepped over to join them, but then she looked at Valerie. “And, you need to rest.”

“She’s right,” Catherine declared. “You haven’t slept, you gave us a lot of blood while we were out last night, and you’re recovering from a concussion.”

“I agree, go get some sleep, Val.” I gave the freckled blonde a kind smile.

“But--” Valerie started to protest.

“No, no, no ‘buts,’” Catherine stopped her, and she slung an arm around the farm vet’s shoulders. “You’re going to get some sleep even if I have to tie you to the bed myself.”

“Alright, oh my god,” Valerie grumbled, and then she attempted to stifle a huge yawn. “We’ve got to stop and talk to Johnny about the jeep.”

“Geez,” Catherine chuckled as she led the dark blonde back through the barricade. “It’s like you’re trying to unhinge your jaw to swallow a moose or something. The jeep can wait, we’ll go see this Johnny guy later.”

“You’ll find the jeep about a quarter mile up past the western barricade,” Erika explained to Brianna, Neko, and Lily. “It’s in the middle of the road, you really can’t miss it.”

“Okay, is it just, like, guns and stuff?” Lily asked as she tossed her long dark curls over her shoulder.

“There are some farming tools, too,” Erika answered. “A shopping basket of ammo, and at least three plastic bags of seeds and seedlings. It may all be a little jumbled, but everything was still inside.”

“We’ll haul it all back in a jiffy.” Brianna smiled, and then she caught sight again of the brutalised humans on the ground behind me, and her smile faded into a frown. “It’s so terrible, we’ve got to stop him.”

“Thaddeus won’t get away with this,” I assured the pretty blonde girl. “We’ve pissed him off enough to ensure an attack on Red House. Now, we’ll kill him and every one of his fucking asshole friends.”

“Come on, Bree.” Neko hugged her friend quickly and then tugged her away from the gruesome scene. “Let’s go be useful. Lily, you coming?”

“Right behind you,” the olive-skinned girl called, and she jogged a few strides to catch up with them.

“What should we do first?” Natalie asked.

“There’s a lot of defenses we can still put in place,” I said.

“I was thinking about something that might be helpful,” Erika began as she pulled her long dark hair over her shoulder. “How many grenades do we have left?”

“I’m not sure exactly, I think maybe a dozen?” Natalie’s eyebrows knitted together, and she squinted at the techy girl. “Why?”

“I think we could set up a tripwire of sorts along the section of the river that runs up closer to the church.” Erika crossed her arms over her full breasts, and she tapped a finger on her temple. “If it were me, and I were planning an attack on Red House from the southeast with an army of vampires, I would send some through the marshland there to try and sneak into town.”

“Hmm.” I nodded as the genius of the strategy struck me. Then I pointed south of the barricade where a moderately thick forest was the only thing that stood between us and the middle of Red House. “If they cut through the woods here, they could make it into town on foot without a whole lot of trouble. They could sneak up on us.”

“Or we could catch them off guard and blow them into smithereens before they knew what hit ‘em.” The dark-haired girl nodded, and she grinned at me. “Exactly.”

“Wow,” Natalie gasped softly. “That’s a brilliant idea, Erika.”

“Thanks.” The shy girl blushed. “If we set up all the remaining grenades along the bank of the marshes there, and hide them well enough in the brush, then if Thaddeus’s vamps try to come in from that direction, they’ll trip the wire and blow themselves up before they make it close enough into town to make trouble.”

“I wish we had more grenades left,” Natalie mused. “They’re so damn helpful.”

“Well…” Erika hesitated a moment before the rest of her sentence came out in a rush. “I may have a vague idea how to build a pipe bomb.”

“What?” Natalie and I gasped in unison.

“How do you--? Why do you--?” I fumbled for the right words, but my mind overflowed with questions.

“I don’t know.” Erika blushed furiously, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve Googled some weird shit over the years, I guess. I like to know how things work, and I get curious.”

“It’s a wonder you’re Googling habits didn’t bring the NSA down on your apartment.” I smirked at the dark-haired girl.

“Oh, no, I was always very careful to use a network of VPN’s that would redirect my browsing traffic through at least four random locations around the world.” Erika nodded confidently.

“Uh… okay,” I murmured as my brain spun. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’m glad you used to get bored and Google weird-ass shit.”

“Honestly?” Natalie laughed, and she smiled at her genius roommate. “Me, too.”

“Happy to help, I guess,” Erika giggled, and she feigned a little curtsey at us.

“Hey there, Sam,” Mark’s commanding voice called out from the other side of the barricade. “How’s it going?”

“Well, Mark,” I answered, and I looked pointedly at the heap of distorted human bodies behind me. “Things have been better, that’s for sure.”

“Aw, shit,” the tattooed man grumbled. “Well, that explains why Ross and Perkins were rushin’ off to Mary Bess’s place muttering about a back loader.”

“Yeah, you know if they had any luck about that?” I asked Mark as his hunting buddy Jerry strode around the barricade to join us.

“Well, damn.” Jerry whistled as he took in the gory scene.

“I’d expect so, seein’ as I heard some cussin’ and hollerin’ from up her way.” Mark twisted the end of his perfectly waxed mustache between his fingers like Snidely Whiplash. “Then there was an awful ruckus as she started up the old hunk of junk.”

“Good, that will make their job a little easier,” I said.

“Tasked ‘em with burying these poor souls, didya?” Jerry asked, and he frowned heavily as he looked again at the bodies.

“Yes,” I answered. “As far as we know, these people probably didn’t deserve to die like this, and I see no reason why they should be denied an honorable burial.”

“It’s the least we can do for them,” Natalie said in a hushed tone.

“Well, Sam, you guys go on about yer business,” Mark said, and he ran a hand over his shaved head. “We’ll take over watch here, and then we’ll help Ross and the lieutenant load these sorry bastards up when they get back.”

“We got it,” Jerry confirmed, and he gave me a nod.

“Alright, thanks guys.” I gave them a half-hearted grin, and then I glanced at Natalie and Erika. “Let’s head back to the church, I’d like to know more about that, er, Googling of yours, Erika.”

“Oh, right,” the dark-haired girl replied after a short-lived look of confusion flashed across her face. “Come on, I’ll tell you more about my interest in, er, plumbing.”

We headed back through the barricade and walked in silence for a few moments before I felt confident Mark and Jerry would be out of earshot.

“So, what did Google teach you about making pipe bombs?” I finally asked.

“Ooooohhh.” Natalie’s eyes lit up with understanding, and she flashed a bright smile at Erika. “That’s what you meant when you said you had an interest in plumbing.”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “I wasn’t sure that was the kind of information Erika would feel comfortable with everyone knowing about her.”

“It’s fine,” the shy girl giggled, and a soft blush colored her cheeks. “It’s not like the feds are going to come and arrest me for my internet browsing history now. And besides, I think if they wanted to throw me in jail for something, it would be those vamps we murdered at Cabela’s last night.”

“That’s a good point,” I chuckled.

“So, what do we need to make for making pipe bombs?” Natalie asked as she chewed on her bottom lip. “Isn’t it, like, complicated?”

“It’s really not that complicated, actually,” Erika said. “All you need is a metal pipe, something to cap both ends with, a source of fuel, a fuse of some kind, a drill to make a hole for the fuse, and maybe some hot glue to keep the fuse in place.”

“Fuel source?” I asked. “What? Like gasoline?”

“No.” The dark-haired girl shook her head. “From what I read, black powder seems to be the most effective.”

“What about fuses?” Natalie asked. “Like, candle wicks?”

“No, that would go out before detonation way too easily,” Erika replied. “The website I found recommended the kind of fuses you find in fireworks.”

“Oh, great, so all we need to do is find a bunch of fireworks,” Natalie groaned and rubbed her hand across her forehead. “Perfect.”

“Don’t forget,” I said as I smirked at my beautiful girlfriend. “We’re not in New York any more.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the people in Red House have some kind of small fireworks in their basements,” Erika mused.

“Oooh,” Natalie hummed. “You’re probably right about that.”

By this point in our conversation, we had made it back into town, and I spotted Lieutenant Perkins as he headed toward the eastern barricade.

“Perkins.” I waved at the retired soldier, and he jogged over immediately.

“Lieutenant, sir.” The gray-haired man stood at attention in front of me and gave me another salture. “Please.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” I smiled softly at the man. “Your rank is clearly very important to you, I’ll do my best to remember that.”

“Thank you, sir.” The veteran smiled back at me. “Now, what can I do for you, sir?”

“Where’s Ross?” I asked, and I glanced around the street quickly. “He nearby?”

“He’s gone to pick up two shovels from the general store,” the lieutenant replied. “Should be back in just a moment, sir.”

“Alright, when you two are done taking care of the, uh…” I fumbled for the right words.

“The deceased, sir?” Perkins offered.

“Yes, thank you.” I nodded gratefully. “When you two are all finished up with that, gather up the other military personnel and come meet us in the general store.”

“Yes, sir,” the gray-haired man said. “May I ask, sir, what it is you need us for?”

“We’ve got some preparing to do about town,” I answered. “We’re going to set up a tripwire with the last of our grenades, and we have intentions to assemble a few, uh, less conventional explosives, as well.”

“Less conventional, hmm.” The lieutenant’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch before his composure returned. “Yes, sir, indeed. I’ll gather up the boys, and we’ll meet you at headquarters straight away.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” I stood straighter than I normally would and gave the honorable man as respectful a nod as I could muster before he marched off toward the barricade.

A moment later, a thick woman with wild gray hair rode past us in a bucket loader that coughed and wheezed slowly down the street. She caught my eye and nodded curtly, and then she chomped down on the lit cigarette that hung from her lips.

“That must be Mary Bess,” I mused as Natalie, Erika, and I turned to watch her chug to the east end of town at the painfully slow pace of a snail through molasses.

“Sure is,” Ross chuckled as he jogged past us. He held a shovel in each hand and quickly passed by Mary Bess and her ancient-looking machinery. “Come on, now, girl, you can do better than that!”

“Don’ ya sass me, boy!” the sturdy-looking woman called after the dark-haired man as she stubbed her cigarette out on the rusted metal frame of her bucket loader, and then she tossed it away into the grass.

“Come on,” I said to my girls. “Let’s go find out exactly how many grenades we have left.”

“Then we should check that little hardware store,” Erika said, and she smirked at me. “I bet they have the kind of metal pipe we’ll need for our ‘less than conventional explosives.’”

“The trickier part will be the black powder.” Natalie tapped a finger on her chin as we walked back into the general store.”

“Whatcha need black powder for?” Celia asked from the exact place where we’d left her more than an hour ago.

The older woman was still bent over a slightly less tangled mess of wires that spilled from the plastic side of a CB radio.

“Well, we wanted to make some pipe bombs,” I explained. “Word is we’ll need black powder for that.”

“A lot of it, I expect,” Erika added, and she flashed the mother hen of a woman a sheepish smile.

“Hmm, pipe bombs.” Celia stood up as she dusted her palms together, and then she propped her hands on her hips. “Now, you see, Sam, if this was normal times, I’d give you quite a talking-to about the recklessness of said idea, and how many fingers yer bound to blow off in the process, but it’s more the end of the world, and we’ve got an entire town of fanged bastards who want nothing more than to eat us all for dinner breathing down our necks. So, I’m gonna tell you Old Man Wilde used to run a little reloading business out of his garage.”

“Is that so?” I asked, and I gave the woman behind the counter a grin. “Old Man Wilde, huh?”

“Mhm, yep.” Celie nodded, and then she bent back over her project. She stripped the end of a blue wire before she continued. “I hear his son still has quite the stash of supplies leftover from when his daddy had to retire after his stroke last year.”

“That could be quite useful.” I smirked.

“Mhm, I should expect so,” Celia said, and then she threw me a grin as she picked up the entire mess before her and unceremoniously dumped it straight into the garbage can. “This piece of shit is a waste of my time.”

“Well,” I laughed. “Do you think your time might be better spent directing me out to Old Man Wilde’s place?”

“That’s exactly what I think, Sam.” Celia smiled, and she strode out the front door of the general store. “I’ll take you up there myself, it ain’t far at all.”

“Thank you, Celia,” Natalie said.

“No trouble at all,” the older woman replied. “I’m happy to help out however I can, especially since you girls, and Sam, here are going to wipe that plague of bloodsuckers out of Black Betsy for good. Come along you three, Johnny’s place is up this way.”

“Thanks,” I said, and we followed the kind woman down the store’s front steps.

Celia led us west and then turned off onto a small side road, and she chatted at us lightly about Johnny and his old man while we walked.

“They were into every hobby you can imagine, never had nothing to do, those two.” Celia waved her hand vaguely in the air as she walked. “They hunted together, they did dirt bikes when Johnny was a boy, fishing, wood carving, they helped folks around town with carpentry repairs, there was even a time Johnny and his daddy talked about trying out skydiving, but they never got ‘round to that. Then there was, of course, the reloading business I was telling you about, and they ran the only auto repair shop in town together until Old Man Wilde couldn’t get on his knees anymore, and then Johnny took it over. He was still fixing up cars until all this started.”

“Hang on a second,” I said when the older woman stopped to take a breath.

“Yes, Sam?” Celia turned over her shoulder to look at me. “What is it?”

“Valerie told me a ‘Johnny’ could probably get James’s jeep running again, said he was the best mechanic in the entire county,” I reiterated. “Any chance this is the same Johnny we’re going to see now?”

“One and the same,” Celia confirmed, and she nodded her head as she smiled. “He’s the only Johnny in all of Red House, curious, don’tcha think? Usually such a common name, but, eh, I guess we don’t like to do things the common way around here.”

“No, that’s certainly true,” Natalie murmured as we approached an old run down garage that overflowed with all kinds of things.

It was an average sized two car garage at first glance, but I quickly realized the whole building went back far enough that Johnny could probably fit four or five cars end to end inside. One bay door was open, and the other had a row of windows that looked like they were only held together by the thick layer of sawdust between the pattern of spider web cracks. The dark blue paint that, at some point, had covered the exterior walls, flaked off in huge chunks and littered the ground all along the length of the deep garage.

There were dozens of cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling in nearly every square inch of space I could see through the open door, and where there wasn’t a box, there was some kind of machinery, power tool, or disassembled car parts. I read the words ‘nuts n bolts’ on one box, another said ‘spare springs - various,’ and more than a few had the less than helpful description of ‘useful shit’ scrawled across the side. I thought I even spotted an old wooden airplane propellor that hung from the metal beams further back in the garage. Then I heard a generator start up from the back of the tired building, and suddenly the scream of an electric saw assaulted my ears.

Celia waited until the saw died down, and then she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. “Johnny Wilde, you home?”

“Celia?” A gruff voice came from deep in the bowels of the building. “That you, ma’am?”

“Sure is, get on out here, if you please,” Celia called back with the same stern motherly tone that gave a person no room to wiggle out of her requests.

“Hang on just a minute,” Johnny shouted back.

I heard the generator die down, and then there was a loud clanking sound followed by a muffled curse. A moment later, Johnny limped out into the light of mid morning, and he bent down to rub soothingly at his knee.

“This whole place is an accident waitin’ to happen,” the middle aged man grumbled. “What can I do ya for?”

The man wore overalls covered in rips, sawdust, and specks of paint in every color. He didn’t wear a shirt underneath, and I saw the hair on his thick chest was as curly and black as the hair on his head. Johnny had a kind face covered in two days of stubble, and a thick push broom style mustache twitched merrily above his mouth.

I liked him instantly.

“Sam, and his ladies, here were wondering about getting their hands on some black powder,” Celia replied in a conspiratorial tone as she held one hand up to her mouth. “I thought you might be able to help them out and all.”

“Black powder, hmm?” Johnny scratched his fingers down his whiskers and leaned against the side of the open garage bay door.

“Yes, Celia said you and your father used to run a reloading business and that you might have some black powder still stored away,” I told the curly haired man. “We were hoping you might be able to help us out and share a little bit with us.”

“Well, actually,” Erika added with a shy smile. “A whole lot of it would be great, in fact the more you have the better.”

“Well, normally I’d love to help,” Johnny began, but then the corners of his mouth turned down, and he shrugged his shoulder lightly. “But, you see, I may have gone and used it all, already.”