Vicky could do little more than watch as Jill was having the life crushed from her by the huge cop. His face, twisting with anger as he tightened his grip, told her he wasn’t going to stop until she was dead. And if she didn’t do something soon, he’d surely get his way. She had to think, and she had to think fast.
‘Hey Hal,’ she shouted, trying to grab his attention. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
With his teeth clenched and saliva pouring from his mouth, Hal lifted his head; his stare fixing her with a rage she’d never seen before.
Now what?
She looked at the bars of the cell, then back to Hal. He looked at the bars of the cell, then back to her, and that’s when she ran at them. With a dull Thwong She bounced off staggering for a second or two before collapsing to her knees. Her nose started to bleed almost instantly, and she’d sustained a deep cut below her left eye. She started to sway as a pale-grey mist began closing in from the outskirts of her eyes, reducing her vision to little more than a small dot. But before slipping into total unconsciousness, she saw Hal release Jill, at least she’d got that bit right.
Jill started to cough and it hurt like hell, it felt like someone had started a fire deep in her throat, and rubbing at it like she was, didn’t seem to be putting it out. She had no idea where she was, she had no idea who she was. She tried to focus on a blurred blob only an arms reach away. Someone looked to be kneeling over a body, someone big, someone huge in fact. Someone as big as that cop she’d just fought with in her dream. Dream ...?
A sudden surge of adrenaline slapped her about the face with the roughest of hands and she sprang for the open door. Leaping through, she closed and locked it, pulling out the keys.
Hal shot to his feet lunging for the bars as the door slammed shut before him. ‘Open this fucking door you little bitch,’ he shouted.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ replied Jill, a little raspy, but nonetheless triumphant.
She watched as Hal moved over to Vicky and lifted one of her arms, and then put his booted-foot under her armpit and started to pull. And once again she heard that cold, composed, and unhurried voice of his. ‘Open it now, missy. Or I’ll pull her fucking arm clean off!’
Would he really do that? Or was his fear of that Ella woman greater than his anger right now? A question arose ... did she have the guts to call his bluff?
Trying not to show the fear that welled in her stomach, she walked closer to the bars. ‘No you won’t,’ she said, as bold as her voice would allow. ‘You daren’t harm her any more than she is already.’
Hal went for his gun only to find an empty holster. He let go of Vicky’s arm and rushed at Jill reaching through the bars in an attempt to grab at her, but she dodged his lunge with relative ease. Vicky was still breathing and Jill knew she’d be safe for now at least, but how long would for now last?
She went to the desk where she picked up his gun. It was heavy, much heavier than she’d expected it to be. But what could she do with it? Vicky can’t walk out of the cell, and threatening the cop at gunpoint will do nothing. She put the gun back on the desk and picked up the telephone’s receiver. She could call for help, call the state police, get them out and have son-of-Lurch arrested, along with the rest of them. She put the receiver to her ear and tapped on the buttons, only to find the line dead. She couldn’t believe he’d actually told her the truth.
She watched as Hal looked up to the open hatch a second before hearing thunder, then saw a grin begin to form on his pock-marked face.
‘Hey, lady,’
Jill turned to her right to see the man in the other cell moving his head.
‘Hey, lady, can you hear me?’
She was about to try the keys in the lock when a modicum of common sense kicked in. What if this guy was one of them? He could be; ugly-fuck practically said he was. She again picked up the gun and pointed it at him.
‘Who are you?’
‘He’s just some nosey little fucker who thought he could outsmart us,’ said Hal.
Jill turned. ‘I wasn’t talking to you, fuck face.’
More thunder sounded, this time much closer. Hal’s grin soon broadened to a full blown smile.
‘My name’s Gregg Pieroni, I’m a private investigator from Richmond. If my hands were free I’d show you my ID.’
‘You don’t have ID, I checked. What were you investigating?’
‘I was following a lead, some young girls have gone missing and if my source was correct, they may have ended up here. So are you gonna let me up or not? Only I have this phobia about being shackled down. I had a very nasty experience not so long ago, which I’m trying to forget. And not only that, it smells like ... like burnt pork down here!’
Small dots of black started to appear on the grey concrete floor around him, and one or two raindrops hit his chest.
‘Ow! What the fuck is that ... acid rain?’
Hal moved to the wall of bars dividing the two cells. ‘It is to you, hot-shot’
As more rain started to hit Gregg, he began shouting and pulling at his shackles. ‘Get me the fuck off this floor, lady.’
Jill dropped the gun at her feet and started to sort through the keys in a bid to get the cell door open.
Gregg was trying his best to turn away from the open hatch. ‘C’mon, lady, hurry up will you?’
Jill fumbled even more with the keys. ‘I’m going as fast as I can. And if you’d stop shouting at me, and calling me lady, I’d probably do it a lot quicker.’
Hal laughed as he took in the scent of Gregg’s burning flesh. Then he raised the pitch of his voice and said. ‘Oh save me, I’m mel-ting, I’m mel-ting.’
When she’d finally got the door open, Jill entered picking up Gregg’s jacket and T-shirt. She hurriedly laid them over his face and body while she unlocked the shackles.
Once out of the cell, Gregg checked his upper body to find around a dozen small pock marks. ‘How’s my face? How’s my face?’ he asked, with some urgency.
Very handsome, and if you don’t mind me saying so, you have nice eyes too. ‘Yeah, it’s okay,’ she said, feigning disinterest.
Gregg pulled on his T-shirt and jacket before picking up the 3.57 Magnum the pretty young girl dropped to the floor. He was going to shoot the cop, and nothing was going to stop him. He moved over to the cell aiming point-blank for the cop’s head, he felt the pressure behind his trigger-finger building as he started to squeeze, then, of all things, the stupid girl pulled his arm down.
‘No don’t, if you shoot him the whole town might hear.’
She had a point; he hated to admit it, but she was right. He didn’t fancy that lot with their crazy, rabid dogs, chasing him around those woods again, once was more than enough. He moved over to the desk where he pulled open a couple of drawers until he found his own gun. He released the clip and checked to make sure it was still fully loaded.
Gregg used a Colt M1911, accurate for the first fifty-yards or so, but after that, it was no more than a short, fat, noisy stick. But it was his short, fat, noisy stick, and he liked it.
He put both guns on the desk and sat in the cop’s chair whilst pulling on his left boot, but not before checking inside it. ‘Hey, where’s my phone?’
The girl pointed to some crushed pieces by the cell. ‘I found it lying next to you, after I ... after you ran into the car.’
Gregg picked up the receiver from the desk phone putting it to his ear.
‘I tried that already, it’s dead.’
He took a leather wallet from the same drawer his gun was in and passed his ID to the girl. ‘Are you satisfied now?’
‘Okay, so you are Gregg Pieroni, but you have some explaining to do.’
‘Fine, but first I want some answers of my own. Who are you for starters?’
‘I’m Jill Gordon, and that,’ she said, indicating to the girl lying in the cell, ‘is Vicky Meredith. We were on our way to Richmond when you ran in to the road. Then fucking Robocop here decided to haul us in.’
Vicky was still motionless on the floor, and Hal stood at the cell door holding the bars with his face pressed between them.
Gregg picked up his Colt and went over to him. ‘What the fuck’s going on with that rain?’
Hal smiled, revealing a rack of dark-yellow, pointed teeth and blood-red gums. ‘You can’t guess, hot-shot?’
Chambering one of the rounds, Gregg aimed for Hal’s head. ‘I’m just not in the mood for guessing games right now! What the fuck was it?’
‘You’re one of us now!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Chupacabra,’
‘Chupa-wotra?’
‘No way,’ interrupted Jill. ‘You’ve gotta be shittin’ me!’
Gregg turned. ‘What? What’s a chub-wa-cara-warra?’
‘Chupacabra, Gregg,’ she said, glancing over to Hal. ‘That would explain why you didn’t die when I hit you with the car.’
‘You don’t say. So, are you going to tell me what one is?’
Parking herself on the edge of the desk, she did just that. ‘Gregg, If what he says is true, there’s only one way to put this. And by the way, I know what I’m talking about, I received an “A-star” for the paper I did on the subject in highschool a few years back,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Chupacabra,’ she continued, ‘were supposed to be some kind of myth, and until just now, I was sure they still were.’
Gregg sighed looking at his make-believe wristwatch. ‘A-hem!’ he said.
Unperturbed by his weak attempt at wit, she again continued. ‘Chupacabra is an old Spanish word, loosely meaning, “Goat sucker”. But the more modern term for the word, and believe me, this’ll blow your mind, is much closer to vampire!’ Her words were eerily punctuated by a flash of lightening and a loud clap of thunder directly overhead.
Gregg paused, unsure if he’d heard her right, then laughed. ‘Bullshit, no such thing as vampires,’ he said, then looked over to Hal who lifted one eyebrow as if to say “Ya wanna bet?”
Still looking at Hal, Gregg heard a cl-click sound. He turned to see Jill pointing the 3.57 directly at his head.
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Does it look like I’m kidding? Place the gun on the floor and kick it into the rain,’ she said, indicating to the wet floor of the open cell.
Gregg’s tone was calm, soft. He had no idea if she’d fired a gun before, and he could see the saftey catch was off. ‘Jill, please put the gun down, and listen to me.’
‘Do it now,’ she shouted.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll do it, just take your finger off the trigger. That’s all I ask.’
Watching her finger ease off a little, he raised his left hand placing his gun on the floor with his right. He flicked out his foot knocking it towards the shallow puddle now in the centre of the cell, hoping it landed short, it didn’t. Dropping his arms just a shade, he stepped closer to Jill. He could gain her trust, talk her round. He was sure of it.
‘Jill, if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it a dozen times over.’
Jill indicated for him to keep em’ up. ‘Okay, if you’re not a vampire,’ she said, then shook her head. ‘Christ, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. If you’re not one of them, how do you explain your broken bones suddenly not broken? And that shit with the rain, what the hell was all that about, hah?’
Gregg turned to Hal. ‘Would you please tell her I’m not a fucking vampire?’
Hal pouted his lips, mocking him. ‘Can’t do that little buddy.’
Gregg turned back to Jill, he sighed, lowered his arms, and turned away walking back into the open cell.
Jill held the gun at full stretch. ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot you. And I mean it!’
Gregg ignored her as he placed his hand under the falling rain, and once again it burnt him. ‘Fuck,’ he shouted. ‘Okay, listen, these people were out in daylight yesterday, they didn’t burn up, they didn’t spontaneously combust in sunlight. So how can you say they’re vampires?’
Jill lowered the gun slightly but kept it on him. ‘Okay, so daylight doesn’t kill them, what if … what if rain does? It burns you right? What if nature has devised herself another method of killing the fuckers?’
Hal started clapping his still-gloved hands. ‘My, my, you deserve that A-star, missy.’
She aimed the gun at him then. ‘Call me that one more time, and I’ll shoot you instead.’
Hal raised his hands backing away from the bars, but still kept his smile.
Gregg turned to him. ‘You’re saying rain can kill you?’
In answer to that question, Hal was non-commital in the absolute.
Gregg thought back to when they first turned on him. He wasn’t bitten, at least he doesn’t think he was. But he does remember being lucid enough to know they injected him with something. Inadvertenly he rubbed the area at the back of his head.
‘What was in that injection you stuck me with?’
‘Don’t know what’s in it, just know it makes you one of us. We wanted to turn you and fasten you to the floor there, and then have the rain wash you clean away, but somehow you escaped.’
Gregg still felt the need to protest, he went over to one of the windows. ‘See, I have a reflection, vampires don’t, and I don’t have a craving for blood. So now will you believe me?’
‘Right now,’ Jill said. ‘I don’t know what to believe.’
‘You don’t have a craving yet,’ said Hal, ‘but you will. You used to get thirsty for water, now that exact same thirst will be for blood, and you won’t be able to ignore it. If you try drinkin’ water, you’ll just burn out your throat. You can drink your own piss mind.’
‘I won’t be doing any of that, I can assure you.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said too, in fact, that’s what most of us said. Only sooner or later, you’ll crumble. So why don’t you do us both a nice big favour? Take the gun off that fuckin’ bitch and get me the fuck outta this cage!’
‘That’s why there’s no one else here!’
Jill moved the gun left and right following as Gregg began to pace the room. ‘What did you say?’
‘I would have expected the one they call Ella to be here. Tall woman, scraggly blonde, kind of ugly.’
‘She was here earlier. She’s the one had you shackled to the floor.’
‘And now it’s raining she’s keeping away, all of them are keeping away.’
‘So?’
‘They’re keeping away because what you said was right, the rain will kill them.’ After saying this, he noticed her guard was down, along with her aim. There was about eight feet of distance between them; a gap he gradually started to narrow. ‘Jill, we have to get out of here.’ He knew he’d have to keep talking, allowing her no time to think. He’d done it many times before, and always came out on top. ‘We have to get Vicky from inside there,’ he said, indicating with an open hand, and again he moved closer. ‘You have to trust me, Jill.’ Another foot evaporated. ‘You just have to trust …’ He rushed forward knocking the gun from Jill’s grip and quickly picked it up. ‘Okay, if I wanted you dead, you would be,’ he said, putting the gun back in her hand. ‘So,’ he added, closing his eyes. ‘If you’re going to shoot me, get it over with.’
Jill sighed lowering the gun. ‘Okay, now what?’
