John Steakley - Vampire$

It was… who? One of the bishop’s men… Bryan? Was that his name? One of the monsters had crashed through on top of him and now was on all fours above him, like some slavering undead bear, and Bryan screamed and cried and tried to pull himself out from under and the brute held him there, fast, with one rotting hand on his chest and Bryan screamed again and again and scrambled desperately backward, flailing his hands and feet but he could get no traction on that beautiful thick carpet and the beast above him…

Did nothing.

None of them were moving! They seemed stunned and stunted and almost paralyzed and two or three of them were holding their heads with rancid hands. Hurting. Hurting.

But there were so many! So many of them!

“It’s this place,” cried the bishop. And he rose up and strode forward, the robes of his office swaying out around him, and he grasped the great cross about his neck and held it aloft.

“This place!” he shouted triumphantly. “They cannot bear the House of the Lord!”

“Get them back!” roared Jack Crow.

Felix turned to see what Jack was saying and saw them, saw the women, saw her! The women were here — she was here, My God My God!

“Get them back!” roared Crow again. “Cat! Adam! Move ’em back!”

“Where! Outside?”

“No!” shouted Felix. “Put them… put them in the entry hall and close it…

“Yes!” echoed Crow. “And lock the doors and… Cat! Get the Blazer! Move it!”

And that’s when Bryan lunged backward and the black nails at his throat tore the skin and the red blood welled out and the dead bear awoke and his gray lips spread wide and the fangs started down.

Felix and Kirk fired simultaneously and the monster flipped backward from the impact, howling and screeching those awful sounds and the others, the others! So many of them! They woke up too! They lunged toward them — And the bishop. The bishop roared back at them!

“Back! Back, you children of Satan! Back and be purged!”

And he walked toward them, holding the cross in front of him like a goddamned pistol or something and they shouted at him to stop, to come back with them, to fall back, but — The one that got him was so huge. It had long black hair and grimy coveralls and it came from the bishop’s side — he never saw it — and those huge dead arms fell like trees on the cleric and embraced him and squeezed him and…

And Felix couldn’t get a shot! The bishop was blocking the shot!

The bishop didn’t scream. He snarled with fury and twisted around in that death grip.

“In the name of Christ!” he roared into those dead, red eyes, into those greasy, slick fangs, and he shoved the cross into that peeling face…

And it burned it! It burned it! Steam spewed out and the stench of the burning flesh swam through the air and…

And from where came that impossibly bright light arcing from where the cross smote the flesh?

The ghoul howled with pain and thrashed its burly head and tried to duck back from that acetylene cross.

But it would not let go of the bishop.

Instead, it squeezed. Spasmodically, monstrously, it clamped tighter its beast arms and the bishop wailed as his insides were vised together but he never let go of the cross, never stopped jamming it into the burning face, never stopped cleansing him.

Even as he died.

“No!” shouted Kirk, aghast, leaping forward. “Let him go, you filthy…”

“Kirk!” cried Felix. “No! It’s too late to—”

But the deputy didn’t listen. He took one more quick stride. Then two. And he was within a yard of the death grip when the ghoul, still in agony from the dead bishop’s cross, had finally had enough. It jerked backward and threw the bishop’s limp form away, his arms as thick as branches flying outward from his body and his right forearm bashed full on into the deputy’s forehead…

And crushed his skull…

And snapped his neck…

And Kirk turned and looked with astonishment at Felix and then the gunman saw/felt the light go out behind the eyes.

And his strong young body slumped lifeless to the floor.

Felix was still staring, wide-mouthed and unbelieving, at his dead comrade when something crashed hissing and snapping into him from the blind side. They went careening over sideways into a side table and Felix heard the table legs splinter and crack and he ended up propped against the tilted tabletop but these were only minor distant details beside the spitting decay smell of the ghoul grabbing and hissing at him and Felix managed to twist about and jam his left hand into the throat under those snapping jaws and then he was eye to bloody eye with the monster and…

Those eyes burned red and primal and they wanted him. Those slick gooey fangs snapped for him. And he began to lose his grip as the gray skin at the zombie’s throat slid away under his fingers and the hissing increased and the monster had him by both sides of the head and it leaned hard down to reach him, his throat or his cheek or his eyes and the pupils were almost sideways with some impossible glint.

Supernatural, Jack Crow had told him.

And the gunman wrenched his pistol under the monster’s chin and emptied it.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

The monster warped and howled with each impact, spitting black decay and pain, but it still held him and those claws on either side of his head jerked with his pain and cracked the gunman’s head like a thunderclap against the tabletop and Felix… lost it.

The concussion, the impact… Am I dead? he wondered, as all became fuzzy and indistinct and the shattering sounds and shrieks of battle faded down.

Or just dying? Or knocked out or…

The black man lay a few feet from him, twitching and shivering. Not dead, but not coming.

And the vaguely conscious part of Felix thought this was very good.

And then he thought he should maybe find his gun and:

Here it is, in my hand.

And then he reached around and got a new clip-he knew how to do that. He knew how to change clips and he did and then he held the newly loaded gun in his lap and felt very proud and he felt the blood from his head injury flowing down his neck and he saw the other monsters had come to also, understood that they had been only temporarily stunned by the silver bullets.

And by God’s House.

The bishop is dead, thought Felix.

Kirk Thompson is dead too, he thought next.

Soon I will die, too, won’t I?

But I still have my gun and what I will do is: I will shoot them when they come near me and it will not stop them but it will hurt them and that is better than nothing and…

And so he lay there, stunned, against the overturned table, and watched them come for him.

And saw Jack Crow save what was left.

He saw it from a long way off, it seemed, as though Jack and the monsters and even the rest of the building, were far, far away. But he still saw it. And what he saw, even from the end of his conked tunnel, was amazing. Jack Crow did things Felix couldn’t imagine being done. He did things no one else but Jack Crow, Crusader, by God, Jack Crow, could have done.

He was everywhere at once. And had to be. The other goons had arisen at the same time as the black man at Felix’s feet, and though they were slow and ponderous and unthinking, there were too many of them. And they were so hungry, reaching for him, lunging at him, grisly fingers grasping and clawing and — And Jack Crow bashed ’em back. He emptied his crossbow and emptied his pistol and grabbed up a handful of pikes and laid into them. He bashed them, he spitted them, be carved them with splintered ends. There was no one else:

Adam guarded the women in the entry hail. Cat was out bringing up the Blazer. Felix lay almost comatose against the shattered table. For the next few crucial minutes there would be no one else to hold them off but Jack alone.