“Madre Santisima!” exclaimed Angel. Holy Mother of God!
Gus, at the head of the pack, was about to run this vampire motherfucker through when he heard him speak—and speak Spanish. The words stopped Gus—and the vampire-hunting Sapphires behind him—just in time.
“Me lleva la chingada—que haces tu aca, muchachon?” said Gus. What the fuck are you doing here, big boy?
Angel said nothing, letting his facial expression do all the talking as he turned and pointed behind him.
“More bloodsuckers,” said Gus, understanding. “That’s what we’re here for.” He stared at the big man. There was something noble and familiar about him.
“Te conozco?” said Gus. Do I know you? To which the wrestler answered with a quick shrug, but no more words.
Alfonso Creem charged through the doorway, armed with a thick silver rapier with a bell-cup hilt to protect his hand from the blood worms. That protection was negated by the use of his other hand, bare except for a silver-knuckled multi-finger ring inscribed with fake diamonds spelling C-R-E-E-M.
He went after the vampires with furious chops and brutal blows. Gus was right behind him, a UV lamp in one hand, a silver sword in the other. More Sapphires followed close behind.
Never fight in a basement was a tenet of both street fighting and warfare, but it couldn’t be avoided in a vamp hunt. Gus would have preferred to firebomb the place, if he could be guaranteed full mortality. But these vamps always seemed to have another way out.
There were more nesting vamps than they had bargained for, and the white blood spilled like sludgy, sour milk. Still, they cut and chopped their way through, and, when they were done, they returned to Angel, who remained standing on the other side of the broken door.
Angel was in a state of shock. He had recognized the Guptas among Creem’s victims, and he couldn’t get over their undead faces, and the creature howls they emitted when the Colombian hacked at their white-blooded throats.
These were the types of punks he used to slap around in his movies. “Que chingados pasa?” What is all this?
“The end of the world,” said Gus. “Who are you?”
“I’m… I am nobody,” Angel said, recovering. “I worked here.” He pointed up at an angle. “Live there.”
“Your entire building is infested, man.”
“Infested? Are they really…?”
“Vampires? You bet your ass.”
Angel felt dizzy—disoriented—this couldn’t be happening. Not to him. A whirl of emotions overtook him and amid them he was able to recognize one that had long ago deserted him.
It was excitement.
Creem was flexing his silver fist. “Leave him. These freaks are waking up all over the place, and I still got some more killing in me.”
“What do you say?” asked Gus, turning back to his fellow countryman. “Nothing for you here.”
“Look at that knee,” said Creem. “No one’s going to slow me up, get me turned into one of them stingers.”
Gus pulled a small sword from the Sapphires’ equipment bag and handed it to Angel. “This is his building. Let’s see if he can earn his keep.”
As though some sort of psychic alarm had been sounded, the vampire residents of Angel’s building were ready for battle. The undead emerged from every doorway, climbing effortlessly through obstacles and staircases.
During a stairway battle, Angel saw a neighbor of his, a seventy-three-year-old woman with a walker, use the banister as a jumping point to traverse the stairwell between floors. She and others moved with the stupefying grace of primates.
In his movies, the enemy announced itself with a glower, and accommodated the hero by moving slowly for the kill. Angel didn’t exactly “earn his keep,” though his brute strength did give him certain advantages. His wrestling knowledge came back to him in close combat situations, despite his limited mobility. And he felt like an action hero once again.
Like evil spirits, the undead kept coming. As though summoned from the surrounding buildings, wave after wave of pale, slithery-tongued creatures swarmed up from the lower floors, and the tenement walls ran white. They fought them the way firemen fight fires, pushing back, tamping out flare-ups, and attacking hot spots. They functioned as a stone-cold execution squad, and Angel would later be amazed to learn that this was their inaugural nighttime assault. Two of the Colombians were stung, lost to the scourge—and yet when they were done, the punks only seemed to want more.
Compared to this, they said, daylight hunting was a breeze.
Once they had stemmed the tide, one of the Colombians found a carton of smokes and they all lit up. Angel hadn’t smoked in years, but the taste and the smell blocked out the stench of the dead things. Gus watched the smoke dissipate and offered up a silent prayer for the departed.
“There is a man,” said Gus. “An old pawnbroker over in Manhattan. He was the first to clue me to these vamps. Saved my soul.”