No, definitely not till then…
The leader and first of his cabal, but the last member to half-climb, half-drift down from the canopy, by the time Ned’s bony, chisel-toed feet settled to the forest’s pine-needle floor, the howling of dogs and cries of doomed clan folk—men, women, and children; not to mention the hoarse, vivid curses and small-arms fire of others as yet unscathed—had wrenched the entire camp from its bone-weary slumbers.
Big Jon Lamon was up and out of his command vehicle, a side-arm in his belt and another in his hand, shouting to anyone who was listening: “Light! We need more light! If you’ve got a hand torch or oil lamp, switch ’em on or get ’em lit now! We have to see what’s happening here. And you men shooting off those guns: who-the-hell-ever you are, you’d best be damned sure you’re not hitting clan folk!”
Excellent advice, for in the smoky sulphur and pine-scented gloom, lit with sporadic flashes from muzzle discharges and the flickering light of a handful of torches and lamps, the shadowy figures that moved like ghosts against the nebulous velvet backdrop could as easily be men as monsters.
As for the remaining vampires, the eight survivors of Ned’s advance guard: they had no such problem. Creatures of darkness, to them this all-shrouding gloom was as daylight to human eyes. But at the same time and paradoxically, such vampire vision was their greatest disadvantage; for the darker the night, the more brightly burned those feral eyes, appearing to any who saw them as if to drip molten gold or sometimes silver.
Zach Slattery came hobbling from the gloom to join Big Jon in the fitful light from a sputtering lamp in the old bus. And:
“Damn it to every hell!” Zach snarled, propping himself up against the vehicle and thumbing shells expertly into his weapon’s breach. “It’s obvious that this has to be fly-by-nights but right here in the camp? Where did they come from, for God’s sake?”
“Down from the trees,” Big Jon replied. “Don Myers saw one of them; he shot it dead before it could reach the ground! Then he heard other shots from around the perimeter and guessed what was happening. He came at a run into the camp and almost bumped into me as I was getting down from the old bus. He told me what he’d seen and went off into the gloom to look for and kill more fly-by-nights! We were ambushed, Zach! They were waiting for us in the canopy, which would seem to make them unusually intelligent, patient, and perhaps even disciplined—the clever bastards!”
“Too clever!” Zach growled. “As for disciplined: d’you mean well ordered? In which case you’re saying that Garth was right, right?”
“About Ned Singer?” The other nodded. “Yes, I think so. But look out!” Half-crouching and lifting his hand gun, he appeared at first to be aiming directly at his friend! But he wasn’t.
With its jaws gaping and spindly arms reaching, a nightmarish figure with dripping, sulphur-yellow pits for eyes had come ghosting out of the smoky shadows behind Zach.
“Move!” Big Jon yelled, but Zach was already toppling sideways in an intuitive, controlled fall, turning as he went down. And at close if not point-blank range the pair fired their weapons together. The fly-by-night’s chest caved in under the massive impact of Zach’s shotgun blast, and its right eye collapsed inward, exploding into yellow froth from the shock of Big Jon’s single bullet. Then as the thing sighed its last and its carcass crumpled to the ground:
“Just like old times, eh?” Zach gasped, wincing his pain as the leader grasped his outstretched hand and hauled him up onto his feet. “Times when we scavenged together, and sometimes went hunting bloody vampires!” But:
“No, Zach,” Big Jon breathlessly replied, shaking his head, “not quite. For this time we’re the ones being hunted, and it’s one of them who’s directing the hunt! But what the hell—let’s go find and kill some fly-by-nights, shall we?”
“Damn right!” Zach grunted. “By all means. But Garth is out there somewhere, thinking he’s protecting us, while his wife is here and alone. Before doing anything else we should find young Layla and make sure she’s safe. What say you?”
Nodding curtly, the other answered, “I saw the pair of them earlier, setting up nearby. I think she’s this way. Let’s go.”
And without another word these old friends—these two “old men” of the clan—stepped forth into smoky, shifting shadows, cordite stench, and the menacing velvet gloom.
While close by, greatly reduced in number but monstrous and merciless still, the surviving members of Ned’s ambushers—his vampire cohorts from the canopy—carried on with their murderous business…
Only three men left…Ned still thought of these creatures who had climbed up into the dusty canopy with him as “men,” because he knew they had been. It was one of the few remaining vestiges of his own once-humanity, and he had chosen the original eleven because of the weird rapport he had with them; not as strong as with the ones he thought of as swarm leaders, but strong enough that their presence—knowledge of their existence—was ever there in his mind, like faces he would recognize in a crowd. By way of explaining this sense of familiarity, Ned had “reasoned” it likely that they had been taken recently and, much like himself, had temporarily retained certain traces of their previous human mentalities and so were connected on similar wavelengths.
By now, if things had gone to plan, enough of Ned’s kind to constitute a swarm should have completely destroyed the defenders at the bridge and come up to ravage in the forest camp. His fly-by-night ambush party from the high canopy might have suffered some few losses, but the surviving majority would even now be converging on a certain area defined by Ned’s presence. That was how it should have gone and how things should be, but where was the swarm and where his eleven “men” now?
There had been eleven of them, yes, but following immediately on their descent, only eight. Then, as the camp had started awake to the near-distant tumult from the river crossing—and more surely awake to sounds of gunfire and cries of terror from the perimeter—their numbers had quickly reduced to seven, six, five and four. Until a moment ago, even as he searched them out in the telepathic aether, yet another mental connection, like a dully glinting thread in Ned’s mind, had been broken and blinked out, and he was left with three.
Only three survivors of his fly-by-nights, the creatures he had chosen to guard him, watching his back while he avenged himself on those hated men of the clan: Garth Slattery and his old cripple of a father; and Big Jon Lamon, their so-called leader. Well, the latter could die at once and be eaten, but as for the Slatterys: Ned would keep both of them alive long enough to witness the start of what he’d planned for Layla, the many different ways he would use her in bringing those plans to fruition!
Oh yesss! That was how he’d planned it, how it was supposed to have been…but now?
Now things were working out very differently and Ned’s revenge was as yet unrealized, his lust unsated. Ah, but there was time yet and plans can be changed! The girl Layla for instance:
Most of the gunfire within the camp—which had been sporadic at best—had ceased now, for a majority of the armed men had gone down to the river crossing; which meant that Ned might well find Layla all unprotected and incapable of resistance.
He would carry her away into the forest and there have both her body and her blood! Then, if that Slattery pup had survived the fighting at the river crossing, and if his father had likewise survived, they would surely seek Ned out. Indeed, he would even leave a trail that they could follow! For Ned knew that in the dark heart of the forest he and his men—further assuming that by then any of them were left—would have the advantage.