“Get over here!” Garth called in the momentary silence. “To me, where we can form up back to back. We’ll keep on firing until these devils are coming over the wall, and only then make a run for it—”
“—If we have to!” Billy’s yell cut him off, as he and the others closed with Garth. For now they could hear shouting from the direction of the encampment, and the weak beams of electric torches were cutting individual swathes through the smoky darkness, directed by a dozen or more desperate human figures where they came crashing through the scrub heedless of life and limb.
The vampires had also heard the rallying, querying cries of the reinforcements; and now, having come almost within reach of the wall, their advance had slowed to a virtual standstill. But it wasn’t just the headlong approach of the men from the camp that was giving them pause; it was the brilliance of other lights, three sets of paired headlight beams, that came searching from the north and along the river road: the blinding headlights and the men on foot—Garth’s other team from their vantage point at the northern bridge—half-running, half-riding, even seeming to fly, where they clung to the sides of the thundering mystery vehicles!
But…flashing lights and thundering engines? Garth’s mind whirled in circles! What was it Bert Jordan had reported seeing and even hearing: lightning, or lights, over the great forest’s northern canopy, and thunder from that same direction?
No, not at all! Thunder and lightning? Never! Garth laughed out loud; he shook a fist at the night and shouted at his three where they clustered close to him, bewildered but still breathing, still alive: “Why did you stop firing?” he yelled. “They’re not through yet, these damned things—but neither are we—so give ’em all you’ve got!”
Mechanical thunder and jouncing lights, yes, as these magical, wonderful vehicles came lurching over broken concrete and scattered, fragmented tarmac; bursting through uprooted shrubs and wrenched-aside saplings. And now the breathless men of the clan forming up to left and right, with Garth and his three in the middle of a semicircle, and every man of them blazing away at the fly-by-night horde.
And the vampires themselves, blinking their yellow, phosphorescent eyes—blinded and lost in the glaring headlight beams—crumpling like so many rotten mushrooms under a sleeting rain of lead…and worse yet coming their way.
But Garth couldn’t feel sorry for them—not even an ounce of pity—as the three squat kindred vehicles halted in a line abreast and opened up with fifty-foot lances of flame from nozzles in their caged-in prows. Like chemical scythes, these spurting, shimmering jets of incendiary heat were a translucent blue in their outer shells and a searing white in their molten cores. Gnawing into and through everything they touched, these roaring tongues of fire left nothing but red-glowing ashes and slumping piles of cinders in their wake. And the monstrous vampire horde simply melted away under their furious heat and light.
Some few dozens of the swarm fled back the way they’d come, along the access road and out across the half-submerged bridge; but a majority wafted wraith-like along the river road, followed closely by three merciless vehicles that burned their flamethrower fuel till nothing was left, then opened up with automatic gunfire. But in a while even that ceased, leaving the night full of smoke and stench and disbelieving, occasionally stumbling clansmen.
Then in the astonished silence—as the rumble of kindred vehicles died a little, fading with distance where they continued to pursue the fly-by-nights—suddenly men were embracing; but as much for physical support, to keep each other from falling, as in celebration of a victory!
And just when Garth felt his shoulders starting to slump a very little, as he was beginning to surrender to mental fatigue and physical weariness both, then out of nowhere—
—Someone sniggered?
But someone…or something?
For this sinister “sound” was by no means real or physical; Garth had experienced or “heard” such before and knew it hadn’t reached him through his ears only through his mind! And:
Ahhhh, ’prentissss! That sibilant voice “sounded” yet again in his head, audible to him alone. Lured you away, have they—know-it-all ‘pup’ that you are? But did you and all those other clan bastards think to get the best of Ned Singer? Well, who’ll get the best now, eh, ’prentissss? Ned, that’s who! Perhaps not the best of you—but the best of your old cripple of a father, aye—and for sure the best, and the juiciest, of Layla Morgan!
Garth reeled, staggered like a drunkard, as from the encampment in the forest the first hoarse shouts sounded, the terrified screaming, and the half-hearted (or so it sounded to Garth) sporadic crackle of gunfire. But of course it was sporadic—he told himself, as his legs unfroze, beginning to propel him back through the trampled shrubbery toward the dark blot of the forest’s fringe—because the majority of clan ammunition was all but used up! And:
“Layla!” Garth gasped, his heart, lungs and legs beginning to pound. “Layla! Father!”
Layla—yessss! sang that awful, hateful voice in his mind. And Zach yessss! Ha-ha-haaa!
Not knowing what was happening—only now beginning to react to the cries from the camp—the other clansmen at the road junction had been left behind as Garth, now totally galvanized, hurled himself through the night. He forced his body on, faster and faster, yet felt that he moved in slow-motion! It seemed to him that gravity had failed, as if he drifted through the darkness as insubstantial as a leaf, with each frantic leap lasting twice as long as the last one before bringing him down again on slippery creepers and humped roots!
And now from the encampment—staggering and almost falling, fleeing on rubbery, spastic legs from the wraith-like thing that wafted close behind, its elastic arms outstretched and reaching—came someone whose voice Garth knew at once despite its whimpering tone. “Help!” the scar-faced Arthur Robeson cried, thrusting his flapping arms out before him, and clutching at thin air in a manner that might seem in certain ways similar to the creature with burning eyes that came floating after him, but which was entirely different. “Somebody, anybody, please help me!… The fly-by-nights, coming down out of the trees!… They were hiding in the high canopy, and now…now they’re in the camp!… For God’s sake, can’t someone help me!?”
But too late! Robeson’s pursuer was upon him!
At the last moment the terrified man had half-turned, tripped, toppled over backwards as the monster leapt on him, straddled him, opened its jaws impossibly wide…then clamped down and covered his screams and entire face with them! There followed a terrible wrenching, a leathery tearing, before the vampire sat back, its scarlet mouth full of flesh and blood; at which a veritable fountain of blood erupted, hurled aloft on Robeson’s bubbling, gurgling shrieks!
Garth choked back his horror. But even desperately afraid—for himself certainly, but mainly for Layla and his father—he had not been so wildly panicked as to fling himself through the underbrush and the night without instinctively lighting the way ahead with the torch taped to the barrel of his rifle. And now, as his forward rush continued unabated, that weak beam of light showed him the final awful details as the horror seated astride Robeson’s jerking, vibrating body opened wide its bloodied jaws a second time, dipped its head and tore the man’s throat out!
At close to point-blank range Garth blew the fly-by-night’s head off. And as the frothing, pulpy spray collapsed he did the same for Arthur Robeson: which was as much “help” in this world as Robeson was ever going to get! For while it seemed improbable—or even impossible—that in his condition Robeson could ever return as one of the undead, still Garth had reason enough now not to take chances with whatever future, if any, might yet lie ahead.