Chris Holm - The Big Reap

Luckily, Kate — who’d freed herself of her bonds during the attack — was not similarly paralyzed. She rocketed out from beneath the semi’s trailer with such speed and grace I could scarcely believe my eyes, sailing over the lunging vampire and wrapping the length of rope that had until recently affixed her to her chair around its neck. She tucked as she landed, and rolled such that she wound up once more on her feet. The force of her roll yanked the young vamp off-course, and flipped it hard into the far wall. Kate didn’t hesitate. Dropping her rope in favor of a nearby steak knife, she pounced on the vamp, yanked back its head with a handful of gray-brown hair, and drew the knife hard across its neck. Blood gouted as flesh parted in vulgar parody of a smile, but the creature did not die, instead bucking like a bronco trying to toss a stubborn rider. Kate wouldn’t be shaken, though, she just kept sawing and sawing, gore spewing across the room like the devil’s own sprinkler, until finally, the body she rode slumped to the floor, and she rose, her smile a gleam of white amidst the spattered red, holding the woman’s fanged head up by the hair as an angler might a large-mouth bass.

I said nothing for a long second. Just stood and stared. As, for that matter, did Gio who, as the scuffle erupted inches from him, seemed to’ve abandoned both his useless pencil cross and all pretense of protecting his eyes from going melty. As our gazes met, he said, “Jesus fuck, Sam, who’s the skirt?”

“Gio…” said Theresa, like a teacher chastising a recalcitrant student.

“I mean, uh, who’s your lady-friend,” he awkwardly corrected.

“Gio, Ter,” I said, “meet Kate. Kate, meet Gio and Theresa.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” said Kate, and then. “Hey blood-breath, head’s up!” She winged the head she was holding at a vamp who’d been slinking toward the gaping hole in the restaurant wall; it caught the head, and gave the dripping severed neck a sniff before recoiling in revulsion — dead vamp blood apparently proving useless to fellow vamps. Theresa followed the sound of the head’s landing, and let loose a quick blast of her sawed-off, blowing a hole through the young vamp’s chest and leaving it, slumped and lifeless, against the wall.

“Sweetheart,” said Theresa to Kate, “You and me are gonna get along just fine.”

“Where the fuck’d you learn how to do that?” I said to Kate. “Kill vamps, I mean. The White Hats juice you up with some warrior mojo?”

She looked at me like I had two heads. Funny, since she briefly had herself, if you count the one she’d just wung across the room. “Warrior mojo? Not hardly. Fact is, when the forces of evil try to condemn your innocent ass to hell, you start to take a vested interest in your own personal safety. And as for that ,” she says, nodding toward the headless mess that was, until recently, a vampire, “head or heart, Sam — that’s the rule. Vampires or zombies or whatever, it’s all the same. I swear, it’s like you’ve never seen a movie in your life.”

“You shoulda seen his face when I tried to get him to use Google,” Gio said to her.

“Great,” I replied, smiling. “The three people in the whole world I can fucking stand, and they’ve decided to gang up against me.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to get dragged into this one,” said Kate. “These creepshows found me .”

“Us neither,” said Theresa. “In fact, this place was hard as shit to find. It’s got a freaky vibe about it, or at least it did . Even when Gio pointed me and the truck right at it and told me to just hit the gas, it was all I could do not to turn away, like it didn’t want me getting too near, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it rings a bell.”

“Sam Thornton,” Theresa said with a grin, “why can’t you ever take us someplace nice ?”

“The day a Collector agrees to meet you someplace nice is a day you oughta worry,” I said.

“Uh, dude?” Gio, looking around. “Where’d your friends go?”

I looked around as well. Grigori, Drustanus, and Yseult were nowhere to be seen. The latter two, I’d lost track of in the course of Gio and Theresa’s Big Damn Rescue, but last I’d seen, Grigori had been pinned to the wall by Theresa’s semi. Now the truck sat a good foot from the wall, and Grigori was gone.

“Son of a bitch !” I said. “We cannot let those three outta here alive. If they disappear–”

“They won’t,” said Kate, peering out the gaping hole in the restaurant and into the street. “I’ve got a bead on ’em. If we get moving, we can maybe catch them before they get to where they’re headed.”

I followed Kate’s gaze. Saw the three Brethren, no longer projecting their human guises, bounding across the four-lane blacktop on all fours. Well, all threes in Drustanus’ case, since it seemed his left arm had been severed in Theresa’s attack; his stump left spatters of fresh blood bright red in a trail that snaked across the street after him. I followed the trail back inside to its source with my eyes, and saw his missing hand jutting out from beneath one set of the semis’ double-wheels, fingers curled inward like the legs of a dead spider. Wondered what was behind the worry in Kate’s tone. Then I saw the sign beside the entrance to the half-empty parking lot they were traversing, leaping parked-car to parked-car, and I feared I knew.

“Kate,” I asked, “what’s over there?”

“A school,” she answered, wiping her knife off on her pants and starting after them. “Across the street’s the middle school.”

It was Saturday, at least, which wasn’t nothing. Meant there’d be fewer kids. Fewer, but not none. The cars in the parking lot spoke to that fact, and the lights burning in every third window or so.

Clubs, I thought, inasmuch as I thought anything at all. Chess. Math. Anime, for all I knew. Heard once on the news that was a thing. Kids getting together to watch overdubbed cartoons or some shit. I remember thinking at the time, aren’t all cartoons overdubbed?

Lights showed too in the windows of the gymnasium, all placed high up so you’d have to work to knock one out with an errant ball. Meant I couldn’t see inside from the pancake place. Could be it was full. Could be just a janitor, waxing the hardwood floor. What did middle schoolers play come spring — basketball? Floor hockey? I had no idea. The fields outside the school were empty, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it meant three injured, weakened Brethren looking to recharge their batteries with a fresh helping of life’s blood couldn’t swing by the drive-through and nosh to their blackened hearts’ content, they were gonna hafta go inside. Bad because that meant we had to follow after, and find them before they made with the snackin’.

“Let’s move,” I said, heading toward the school at a trot. Kate didn’t need telling, she was already across the parking lot and out into the street — horns blaring as traffic swerved to avoid her, because she didn’t so much as break stride. Me, I was ready to follow, and Gio, round fellow though he was, looked keen to as well, but Theresa was just standing there, mucking with her sawed-off.

“Ter…” said Gio, egging her along.

“Just a sec,” she said, and then I realized what she was doing. She was breaking down her weapon. She unscrewed the barrel cap. Dumped the spring and her spare shells. Then she removed the barrel, hefted it in one hand like a club. The rest, she chucked to the ground. “You think I’m bringing a gun into a goddamn school, you’re fucking nuts,” she said, “but that don’t mean I’m leaving it here where folks might do ill with it, neither. Now let’s go save some kids, shall we?”