He waited for the players to be where he wanted them, and then he dropped from the sky and landed on the roof of his black home.
This would be interesting and, in the end, he knew how it would play out.
He’d been here before.
But it was always a fascinating place to be.
Chapter 23
I
The fire engines hauled ass down the road, their lights and sirens going full tilt. Boyd figured there might be something wrong when he couldn’t see the head of the driver in the first one. He knew for certain there was a little of the crazy stuff happening when the massive vehicle ran over the curb and clipped a fire hydrant. The resulting geyser shot up at an angle and started watering the closest lawn with a torrential downpour.
“You seeing this shit?” Boyd stepped back as the next engine came around the corner and skidded to a halt.
“What the hell?” Danny was looking at the first of the giant red trucks. It rolled to a stop and the driver’s side door opened.
A dead kid climbed out, grinning ear to ear. “That was so cool!” He looked at the new water fountain and jumped up and down, waving his hands like a monkey on fire.
A woman climbed out of the second vehicle, dressed only in a nightgown. The third driver climbed out without putting the fire engine in park and watched as the red truck rolled into a tree. He had a small frown on his face. “I was sort of hoping it would hit the house. Never liked that house . . .”
Boyd recognized all of the Tripp family when he saw them. “You fucken kidding me or what?”
The kid turned and looked at the detectives, but didn’t seem very impressed until he saw the girl with them. “Jayce!”
“Avery?” Her voice was very small.
Avery Tripp started toward her with an eager smile, his eyes flaring with their own light. Aside from the fangs, the glowing eyes, and the pasty white skin, the kid looked healthy and happy.
“Happy Halloween!” He started walking toward the little girl and Boyd took careful aim at the boy’s head.
Avery Tripp ignored him completely, heading straight for Jayce. For her part, Jayce slid in closer to Danny, who was eyeing the Tripp boy suspiciously.
“Oh, come on now, Richie. He’s a kid! What the hell am I supposed to do here?”
“You could try non-lethal force, I guess . . .”
Danny nodded and flipped the shotgun in his hand around so that the butt was held in front of him. “Stop, kid. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Both of the Tripp parents were smiling, amused by their son’s dilemma. “Come on, Detective. He just wants to say hello to Jayce, isn’t that right, Avery?”
Jayce was shaking her head, her dark eyes as round as plates. “You stay away from me, Avery.”
“Why wouldn’t you open the window when I knocked, Jayce? I wanted to see you.” His voice was light and sweet and his face was pure venom. He didn’t walk toward her anymore; he stalked her instead.
“Danny . . .”
“I mean it, kid. One more step and I’m gonna clock you.” Danny hefted the weapon and set himself up for taking a game-winning swing with his makeshift bat.
Boyd saw the motion before anything could go wrong. Alan Tripp came at him like a runaway train, moving with the deadly speed and precision of a guided missile.
He took aim and fired, and missed: the sonuvabitch dodged to the side and the bullet blew a hole in the yard behind where he had been a second earlier. Before he could try to get a bead a second time, Alan Tripp ran into him.
The impact lifted him off his feet and the yuppie fuck kept going, his teeth far too close to Boyd’s face for comfort. Powerful hands reached out and grabbed at his face and his neck. Boyd did the only thing he could think of and pulled the trigger on his pistol again. This time he hit well enough to blow half of the bastard’s back away.
Alan Tripp took it poorly. He shoved himself away and used Boyd as his brace. Boyd rolled with it, which meant that he didn’t break any bones. He hit the ground and felt the pistol escape his hand and slide toward the gutter.
When it hit the curb, the pistol fired and a bullet punched through the side of the closest fire engine, hitting something deep inside the engine that let out a hiss.
When Boyd stopped rolling, he too was along the curb. He didn’t explode or hiss, he just moaned. The back of his head and his left hand both felt freshly sanded.
He looked around to see Tripp coming his way, his previously almost human face suddenly dead and slack, even if the eyes in his skull were still doing the inner-light thing.
Before he could do anything else, Tripp had him by his ankle and was lifting him off the ground. There aren’t many advantages to being a short man, and if he’d ever needed proof he had it. The dead man tried to play crack the whip with him, shaking his entire body roughly. Boyd decided enough was enough and grabbed his regular service piece. He pulled the trigger after being tossed around enough to make him seasick.
The first bullet passed through gray meat and flesh and exited on the other side of Tripp’s neck. Tripp dropped him and, as he fell, Boyd tried for a second shot. He’d have missed it, because the angle was all wrong, but just as he was firing, he hit the ground and was jostled well enough that the second shot put a bullet through the dead man’s backlit eye.
Alan Tripp fell back as if pole axed and hit the ground hard. Boyd could see through the hole in his head to the curb beyond it.
That was around the same time that Danny broke the stock of his shotgun off against little Avery’s head. The heavy piece of oak shattered into so many toothpicks, and the Tripp boy fell on his face with a dent in the side of his skull that would have served well as a cup holder.
Little Avery came back up roaring like a midget lion on steroids. He fought like a kid, with flailing limbs and gnashing teeth. Unfortunately, as Danny was finally realizing, Avery Tripp was not an average little boy.
His fingers ripped the jacket on Danny’s back into confetti and his foot kicked into the detective’s stomach hard enough to double him over.
“You hurt me! Bad man! Bad man!” He was screaming, his voice that of a child, but the tone was completely wrong. He was going postal all over Danny and sounding an awful lot like he was just toying with the man.
Avery grabbed Danny by his hair and wrenched the man backward. He bared his teeth and prepared to chew half of Danny’s face off. He would have done it, too, but Jayce Thornton interfered. At only ten years of age, she’d seen enough movies to know which end of a shotgun meant business. She grabbed the ruined weapon by the remains of the stock and swung it around on her hip like a gunfighter in an old Western flick. When she aimed, she pushed the barrel into Avery’s side and then pulled the trigger.
Avery Tripp was cut clean in half by the shell. Jayce was knocked off her feet and landed on her ass a couple of yards from where she’d started. None of the Westerns her father liked to watch showed how much kick a 12-gauge delivers and she was completely unprepared.
The upper half of Avery growled and crawled in her direction while she sat on the ground and did a mental repeat of the action to see where she had gone wrong. He was dragging a heavy collection of organs with him as he went, and Danny stomped on what he thought was a lung as he tried to stop the rabid little fucker from reaching his destination. It was the sound of dead meat popping under his shoe that snapped Jayce out of her daze.
For the most part, the little girl had held herself together pretty well in Danny’s eyes, but she cut loose with a scream worthy of all three fire engines when she saw the thing that had been her classmate crawling across the ground and aiming to rip her limb from limb.
Danny didn’t figure one more trauma could do too much more damage; she got to watch while he blew Avery’s head into mincemeat.
Boyd sat up and very carefully backed away from the dead man he’d killed. It was wise of him. The dead man got back up, one large portion of his brain sliding out of the ruined head as he did it.
Alan Tripp took a tentative step forward, his legs twitching, and then he took another more confident step. By the fourth pace toward Boyd, he was doing just fine. And smiling with what was left of his face.
Boyd unloaded every bullet in his pistol into the remains of that head and only stopped when there was nothing left above the shoulders to fire on.
“Okay, that one was harder to kill.”
Danny looked at him and nodded. He was looking a little like he wanted to wake up from this bad dream. On the ground nearby, the little girl was staring at the ruin of Avery Tripp with horrified fascination.
Boyd looked around. The third member of the Tripp family was missing.
He walked across the street to pick up his other pistol. It still had a few rounds left and he was growing very fond of the holes the glazer bullets made in whatever they hit.
In the distance but coming their way at high speed, they heard the sound of police cruisers. Boyd had never been very fond of the sirens before, but they were sounding like sweet music as he started to reload his weapons.
“He broke my shotgun, Richie.”
“Be fair, Danny. You did that yourself.”
“I didn’t think his fuckin’ head would be so hard.”
“Well, we’ll buy you a new one.”
“Promise?”
“Have I ever lied to you about a thing like that?”
Danny looked at him and grinned. “You lie to me all the time, Richie.”
“I wanna go home!” Their new friend, the little lost kid, was starting to freak out. He made a silent prayer that her home was still there and occupied by loving parents.
“Where did the little missus get off to?” Danny was frowning.
“Back off, Danny Boy, she’s married.” He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he said the words.
“And how has that stopped you and Whalen?”
“Again with the damned Whalen comments!”
Danny grinned and the three of them looked around as the first of the state troopers pulled up.
Boyd and Danny pulled their badges. Jayce just sat where she was and crossed her arms petulantly. She didn’t have a badge, so Boyd couldn’t really blame her.
The trooper climbed out of his vehicle. He was a tall drink of water with a face made for intimidation. “What in the name of God has been going on in this town?” His voice was better suited to Pee Wee Herman, but Boyd was glad to have another cop or fifty show up. He really wasn’t that picky at this point.
“Wish I could tell you. So far we got a bunch of dead people that won’t stay dead and a lot more people dying.” Boyd shook his head.
The trooper looked at the headless body of Alan Tripp, which was currently twitching and clenching its hands again and again. “The fog out here has been causing a lot of troubles. We’ve got a ten-car pileup on the interstate and more reports coming in. Jesus on a pogo stick, half the roads in this town are shut down.”
The other two state troopers were climbing out of their vehicles now and looking around with shocked expressions on their faces. One of them walked over to the closest fire truck and climbed into the driver’s seat to turn off the flashing lights. Boyd was grateful. The damned things kept his eyes from adjusting to the darkness.
“So.” Pee Wee Herman looked around and scratched at the back of his neck. “What can we do?”
“We’re looking for a man named Jason Soulis. He’s supposed to have the skinny on what the fuck is going on.”
“I’m right here, Detective Boyd. What can I do for you?”
Soulis came walking out of the fog behind the last of the trooper cars, a smile playing at his lips. Boyd did an admirable job of not pissing his pants if he did say so himself.
The trooper closest to him reached for cuffs.
Soulis walked past him as if he weren’t even there and headed for Boyd.
“Speak up, man. What is it you want from me?”
“Answers would be a good starting place.”
“Fine. They’re vampires. There are a lot of them.” He shrugged. “Is there anything else I can help you with? If not, I have business to attend to.”
“Did you make this happen?”
“Yes, actually, I did.”
Boyd didn’t like the way the conversation was going. He shook his head. “Why don’t you come along with us, Mister Soulis? We need to figure out a way to stop this shit and right now.”
“I really don’t have the time or the inclination.” He looked bored with the entire thing and Boyd ground his teeth together.
“I don’t fucken care what you have time for, you sick fuck. Make this stop.”
“No.”
“Then you give me one good reason not to blow your goddamned head off.”
Soulis looked over his shoulder just as the troopers were coming toward him. One look and all three men stopped in their tracks, their faces showing uncertainty.
“I like you, Detective Boyd. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”
“Say what?”
“Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”
“I have dead kids in the streets, you sick fucken bastard. Nothing’s gonna look better in the morning.” He felt the hairs on his neck starting to rise, not with a fear reaction—something he knew very well—but with a charge of static.
“Detective, I’m tired and I have no desire to hurt you or anyone else at the current time, but I will.” Soulis looked at him, pinned him with his gaze, that half smile still on his lips.
“This isn’t going to go the way you want it to, Soulis.”
“No?” Soulis closed his eyes and the sky opened up. Rain came down in heavy sheets. From nowhere the devastating downpour soaked everyone in an instant.
Boyd looked around, surprised by the ferocity of the weather’s assault, but he was looking at Soulis when the man opened his eyes. He was looking at the black pools of shadow where his eyes should have been and he was fully aware that at exactly the same time the man looked back at him the downpour stopped.