Worse, that’s when Creampuff lost his mind. The dog started twisting and squirming in Gil’s grip, sniffing the air and yap-yap-yapping.
Gil couldn’t hold on. The animal was wet and hellishly determined to get away—the terrier leapt from Gil’s arms, hitting the hood of the red sedan on which they stood before disappearing into the crowd of swarming rotters.
“Creampuff!” Gil called once, twice, and again until his voice was rough and raw. “Goddamn dog!”
A pot-bellied trucker zombie started to come up over the car trunk and Gil put an arrow in the lumpy bastard’s forehead—he rolled off the car and was gone, the arrow gone with him. Atop a silver SUV he saw Princess and Pete standing together—Pete fired off judicious shots, and any time a rotter got close, Princess knelt down and chopped him in the brain.
Gil heard Creampuff barking somewhere. His first thought was,
Hell with him
. Stupid dog. Doesn’t want to stay alive? Wants to take the worst possible moment to go hunt a... rat or a squirrel? Fine, so be it. The dog liked the vampire more than him, anyway.
That thought hit Gil again:
the dog liked the vampire more
.
Oh. Holy hell.
“We need to follow the dog!” Gil hollered, over the din of moaning zombies and .22 pistol-fire and roaring rain.
Gil clipped a zombie missing half its face with the side of his crossbow and used the gap to hop down off the car.
But as he did, the half-faced rotter thrust up a searching hand and caught his ankle—Gil’s world yanked sideways as he fell to the asphalt. He let go of the crossbow, thrust out his hands and caught asphalt against his palms—the sting went through his fingers and up his arms as the rest of his body followed, hitting the street. He cried out. Dirty sore-laden feet surrounded him. Rotters reached. He turned over, swatted—one started gnawing, the blackened teeth having no luck getting through his pant-leg.
Gil pushed one away. Kicked another. Felt his world grow smaller, hedged in by rotters swarming over him like ants upon an overturned beetle.
It all happened so fast and yet so very, very slowly.
He pushed one away.
Another moved in—not fast, not cunning, just clumsily lurching forward in the sudden vacancy. A woman. Nose hanging off her face like gristle from a steak. A brittle mop of hair framing her puffy cheeks.
Her teeth sank into the meat of his palm.
And then her head collapsed with the hard
whaaang
of a shovel.
Gil pulled all his limbs in, fresh blood running from the bite-mark. It didn’t hurt, not much—his hands were too numb from falling, from the shock of it all. As he turtled in, he saw a shovel-blade sweep in again, taking out legs and smashing heads. As one zombie’s head snapped to the side, exposing a soggy trachea and severing its spine, Gil caught a glimpse of Aiden.
Aiden, with the shovel.
The other kids filled the space—wooden chair-legs and stabbing picks and Pete bashing in heads with the butt of his Buck Mark.
Gil quickly rolled over, got to his feet, tucked his hand away into his sleeve. Felt the blood soak through.
Don’t think about it. Forget the bite. Forget the ticking clock. Shut up. Eyes forward, old man. Your daughter needs you.
He snatched up his crossbow.
Aiden came up alongside him, shovel black with the ichor that passed for undead blood. “Figured you’d need my help.”
Gil nodded. “We did.” He cleared his throat. “I did. Thanks.”
Aiden saw Gil hiding his hand. “Your hand.”
The boy tensed. Gripped the shovel tight.
“I’m good,” Gil said, mustering a brave face to carry the lie. “I hurt it in the fall. Fell on a piece of glass.” Not a hard lie to swallow—the streets were littered with debris, including the remnants from shattered car and home windows.
“Good,” Aiden said. “I’d hate to have to fuck you up.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry about before.”
“It’s fine.”
“We better move. Find your friend. The zombos won’t be long in the coming.” Somewhere down the street, Creampuff barked: an insistent
me! me! me!
yapping that Gil would know anywhere. He nodded to Aiden, to all the kids, and then took point and hurried forth ahead of his own dread thoughts.
CHAPTER NINE
The Hills of San Francisco
T
HE MANHOLE COVER
launched from its mooring, flipping up in the air like an errant pancake. It hit the street, cracking the asphalt and rolling into a mini-van, where it promptly dented the bumper with a
bang
.
The vampire Coburn emerged from the hole.
Stinking. Dripping. Bleeding.
He dropped to his hands and knees and barfed up sewer water. Gave each nostril one good blow, too—a snot rocket of muck spattered the earth.
Rain fell on him.
It felt good. Made him feel like a new man. Blah blah blah, baptism and washing away sins and rebirth and whatever.
Then he looked up.
“Oh, goddamnit,” he growled. “Really?”
The chorus of gathered dead gurgled and drooled in response. Coburn found himself in the middle of an intersection atop one of San Francisco’s trademark hills—tree-lined streets and parked cars and a trolley track running up one hill and down the next. And all around him, crowds of the doomed and demised.
The dead noticed him, now.
Began moving toward him through the rain. A shrinking circumference of rotting flesh ready to crush him and tear him asunder.
Worse, as if to rub not merely salt in the wound but battery acid and fire ants and a whole fucking
salt lick
, Coburn heard the shriek of the child hunter rise from the manhole cover. He’d crawled his way out of the transport channel and back into the brick tunnels and up through the hole in the street, and now his foe was about to do the same.
But that shriek bought him a moment. As it rose up out of the hole, the encroaching tide of starving dead stopped, cocking their heads like confused beasts.
Speaking of a confused beast—
Coburn saw a darting streak of white shoot out from between rotters.
Creampuff bowled into him, then regained his footing, claiming a spot between Coburn’s boots and settling into a low growl.
“Well, looky here,” Coburn said. “What’s up, you little rat turd?”
The dog gave him a wide-eyed look, then resumed growl.
“Uh-huh. Nice to see you too, pooch. Not a real great time to show up, though, since I think we’re both about to become dinner.”
The dog seemed unfazed. Curiously, Coburn took strength from this.
Then: Another howl rose from the open manhole.
Child’s hands—corrupted, tipped with sharp bone—emerged from the hole like a fly wriggling free of a wound. The little girl’s face surfaced, crooked needle teeth exposed in a lip-curling snarl.
The hunter had arrived.
That’s when everything went batshit.
T
HE VAMPIRE BARELY
had time to parse what was happening.
The hunter leapt from the hole like a hungry flea, bowling into Coburn’s back and knocking him flat.
Ahead, the zombies surged forward, toward him—
But then rotters started falling.
They tilted hard, legs taken out from under them. As they fell forward, backward, to the side, they were kindly absolved of their heads and brains.
The givers of said absolution?
Children.
One with a shovel. One with—knives? Little girls. Little boys. Pre-teens.
Human. Definitely human. He could smell their blood.
Don’t get any ideas
, Kayla said.
They’re not your own personal protein bars.
Coburn didn’t get too long of a look. The hunter dug its claws into his back and pushed him to the ground. His nose ground against the city street. His teeth biting blacktop. He pawed behind him, tried to stand, but again his head smashed into the asphalt—claws gripped the back of his head, dug in beneath the scalp...
Another flash of white. Creampuff got in on the action, making guerilla strikes from the margins. The dog darted in and out with that trademark terrier speed, nipping at the hunter—taking chunks of ear and flesh from jaw—before leaping just out of reach from the monster’s swiping talon.
It gave Coburn the opening he needed. The vampire twisted his body, dumping the hunter to the ground.
He was able to again behold the scene—
This time, with a new—well, old—player.
Gil shouldered his way through a pair of rotters. Crossbow bolt through one’s eye. Swing of the bow to collapse the second’s head.
Their eyes met, vampire and man. They shared a friendly nod amidst chaos.
Coburn felt Kayla in his mind. Excited. Jubilant, even.
The moment did not last.
The girl with the chair leg—her face marred with streaks of ash, ash that looked purposeful, like a kind of war-paint—spun into the questing hands of a jawless rotter. The creature’s hands found her throat. Pulled her close.
Gil saw. Screamed.
The fiend drew her upward to its seeking mouth—
For Coburn, that looked all too familiar.
He did not know this girl. Did not care anything for her outside a small ember of gratitude for coming in here and saving his pale ass.
But he knew his daughter. He knew Kayla. Knew he had failed them both.
Coburn moved. Point A to Point B in a half a blink of a reptile’s eye—and when he came upon the monster holding the little girl, its mouth so close to her throat its fattened raw beef of a tongue was pressed against her skin, Coburn let the momentum of his preternatural speed carry through to the back of his hand.
The rotter’s head cracked, spun off the shoulders the way one might spin the cap off a cheap whiskey bottle. Black blood aerosolized.
The girl fell.
Coburn caught her.
Her throat was torn out.
No!
came Kayla’s voice.
Just the rotter’s blood.
The girl blinked.
The gore slid from her neck, plopping to the ground in the middle of the fracas. Washed away by the rain. The girl stared up at Coburn with eyes moist with wonder and terror.
“What are you?” she asked. A small voice, but Coburn could hear.
He answered the only way he could: “I don’t know.”
Then he set her down. Picked up her gore-clumped chair leg, handed it to her. Next thing he knew, Gil’s back was to his own.
The zombies had again stopped. Formed a circle around them. Staring not at their prey but at the one they believed to be their master:
The child hunter was up. Claws dripping.
At the beast’s feet lay Creampuff. White coat gone red. There on the ground like a broken toy before the child who played too rough.
A surge of anger bubbled up inside Coburn.
His dog. That was
his
dog. Nobody—man, woman, child, or reanimated dead thing with vampire’s blood churning through its nightmare veins—messed with his dog. Shit. Shit!
We’re doomed
, came Kayla’s voice. Echoing through his head.
Doomed... doomed... doomed
.
It was as if Gil could hear her.
Because the old man said, “I have an idea.”
And then he brought up the crossbow, splitting some fool rotter’s head, and hurried over to a minivan parked cock-eyed at the corner.
The child hunter started toward Coburn.
But then another child stepped in the way. Blond shaggy hair, hanging over his face. He parted the hair with his fingers, then held out his hands.
“Ellie,” the kid said. “It’s me. Aiden.”
The hunter hissed. Offered no recognition. Took a step forward.
“Kid,” Coburn growled.
But Aiden took another step forward. “I want to help you. You should come home. With the rest of us. Look. We’re all here.”
“
Kid
,” Coburn said again, this time more insistent. The other kids called to him, too—told him not to do that, to stop, to get away.
“That’s not Ellie,” the tall boy with the bloodied pistol said. Desperate. Voice cracking. Sadness there.
The hunter moved fast.
So did Coburn.
They met Aiden in the middle. Coburn swept the kid up, turned his body. The hunter’s claws again dug into the meat of his back, but with his free hand he grabbed behind the mutant and flipped her forward into a crowd of rotters—undead bowling in the hell-born apocalypse.
Aiden cried out. In that cry a great abyss where grief suddenly rose up like a terrible wind. As the boy collapsed onto his hands and knees, sobbing, Coburn saw Gil had shattered the driver-side window of the mini-van and was sitting in the front seat—he whooped, yelled for everyone to get in.