“Anything in there?”
“Lotta corpses. ”
The vampire who had once been a real estate salesman opened the door to the lecture hall so his companion, who had once been the assistant football coach at Pinelands College, could look inside. The room was awash in blood. It streaked the walls, pooled on the floors, glistened on the faces and bodies of the dead people who lay scattered on the floor or slumped in chairs.
“Someone had fun,” said the real estate man. “Looks like eighty, ninety kills. Shame we missed it. ”
The coach smiled. “The cleanup guys should be here soon, then we’ll have eighty or ninety more playing for the home team. ”
“Works for me. C’mon, there’s still time to hunt before the ritual. I’m still hungry. ”
Grinning like schoolkids, they closed the door and headed out to the campus grounds, where screams and shouts still filled the air.
It was at least five minutes before a voice said, “Everyone stay down. ”
One of the slaughtered bodies moved, first raising his head, which moved quite well despite the gaping ruin that was his throat, then getting to his feet. He surveyed the room. There were eighty-seven bodies, but only fifty of them were dead. The others just looked it.
He moved quietly to the door, listened, opened it and looked out, then closed and locked it. “Okay,” he said crisply, “everyone up. We have to move fast. ”
Thirty-seven murder victims stood up. All of them looked terrified, but in each of their faces was a spark of hope. The trick had worked. When the attack started the killings had been horrendous. The attackers swarmed in and there had been no warning, no challenge, no hesitation…just slaughter. Panic swept the room and the attackers used that, herding the people back toward the corners, cutting off their lines of escape, killing and moving to the next person packed into the corner.
Then one man—the one who now stood by the door—turned all that around. He grabbed a hot soldering iron from his work table and had leapt at one of the killers, swinging the burning needle over and down onto the back of the monster as he bent over a woman to drink from her throat. The creature screamed once and then went limp. When a second monster saw this and closed on him, the man ripped the soldering iron out of the dead creature’s skull and went straight for the newcomer’s eye socket.
Battles sometimes turn like that. A rout becomes a rally when one person takes a stand and shows how to kill the enemy that everyone else thought was impervious. Instead of a dozen terrorizing several dozen, the survivors became the attackers. One to one the creatures were too strong, but when five or six people tackled them, the physics of overwhelming mass and momentum kicked in. It wasn’t an easy win, and the fifty-nine that had started the counterattack had been stripped down to thirty-seven by the time the last killer went down. Thirty-seven plus the man with the soldering iron.
He tried to lead them outside, but the campus was a war zone. So, he herded his small army back inside and came up with a plan.
Tom Savini had made a career out of making people look dead, look like victims, look like monsters had been at them. He was here in Pine Deep to lecture on that very subject. He had everything to hand. There was enough real blood to reinforce the illusion, and though he had to cajole, browbeat, and, more than once, actually deck one of the survivors to keep them from losing their heads and to encourage cooperation, in the end they all followed his lead.
While Savini was painting wounds on a grad student, the young woman started to cry. “This is real…isn’t it?”
He paused and searched her eyes, then smiled. “I’ve been to ’Nam and I’ve spent my life in the movies. Nothing’s real. ”
She gripped his wrist. “Thank you,” she said, her voice low and urgent.
Savini glanced at the door, then back to her. “Thank me when this is over. ”
“You got it. ”
5
Crow pounded his fist on the door. “Val…VAL!”
LaMastra and Tow-Truck Eddie had his back, both of them facing outward to check the hall. The light was bad and half of the emergency bulbs had been smashed. As Crow beat and kicked the door, LaMastra squinted and brought up his shotgun.
“Crow…we got company. ”
“Crow! Is that you?” Her voice was muffled, but it was Val.
“Baby, it’s Vince and me. Open the door. ”
There was noise and the squeal of something being dragged and then the door flew open. Val was there, completely drenched in blood, her face pale, her eyes dark.
For just a moment—for one terrible slice of time—Crow thought that she had been taken, that she had been consumed by the terror; but then she flew into his arms, and the warmth of her, the heat of her tears, the firm and full-blooded reality of her told him the truth. He pulled her close and kissed her bloody face and lips.
“I told you I’d come back for you, baby. ”
“Oh, God, Crow…it’s been so awful. ”