"And the leader?"
"His name is Anton Pavlovich."
Denis stood and went to the door. "I could never understand this. A handful of bloodsuckers puts the entire town on its knees...and everyone sits in the corner like sheep," he said. He was quiet for a moment, then said: "Where can I get something to eat?"
"There"s a cafe across the street." He already had finished another slice of watermelon and was now gnawing on the rind unconsciously. "We have just one cafe."
The owner of the cafe was the first person with living eyes Denis had met in the town. When he entered, there were three people sitting in the dining room, but they immediately got up and left, as though a nasty odor were hovering around Denis.
A woman, not yet old, but with hair streaked with gray, came up to him, peered into his eyes for a second, and then nodded her head: "Kill as many as you can," she said. "I"m begging you."
"I"ll kill them all," Denis answered simply. "What can I have to drink?"
"Just something to drink or "have a drink"?"
"Just drink. I can"t stand alcohol."
"Coffee?"
Denis just smiled, as if she were making a joke.
But the woman went behind the bar, jingled some keys and opened a drawer. She took out a small bag, generously poured coffee beans into a hand grinder and started solemnly rotating the lever as if she were performing a sacred ritual. To a certain degree, it was just that.
Denis waited, looking as if he were enchanted.
The coffee that the woman brought to him in a big red mug was boiling hot. But the most important thing was the fact that it smelled like coffee.
"Where did this luxury come from?" Denis asked, after taking a sip.
"From past life. There is always something left from the past life."
Denis nodded silently.
"Do you want to have a bite to eat?" The woman asked. "I"m not offering you a banquet-you can"t fight on a full stomach. But they"ll come to the city at noon; you"ll have time for a snack."
"Okay," Denis said, although he was full. "What can you recommend?"
"I hate fish," the woman said. "But I have good steaks. Honestly."
"Give me one-well-done and not too big." A young girl peeked into the dining hall from the kitchen. She had a pale face and tightly pursed lips. "Is she afraid of me?"
"She"s afraid of everyone," the woman answered without turning. "Ever since she was dragged away last year. They kept her for three days."
The girl was about fourteen or fifteen. "Don"t you worry," Denis said, although he knew that the woman would not believe him, "I will kill all of them."
"There are eighteen of them," the woman answered. He liked her precision.
"I know. That"s not too many."
Her look changed ever so slightly, as if she had begun to believe him.
"Take this." The woman"s hand dove into the neck of her dress and pulled out a chain. "This is an icon of the Mother of G.o.d. I believe it was what saved my daughter."
"No," Denis said, and gently but firmly stopped her hand. "I can"t take it. But you"ll help me immensely if in a half-hour you bring me another cup of coffee."
"If you kill them all, I"ll make you a cappuccino," the cafe owner said. "With foam."
They drove into town from the sea side, the side of the pier where, in a leisurely manner, they set a couple of old barns on fire. The fishermen had long ago gone off to sea in their little boats, taking their wives, children, and more or less all of their valuable household possessions.
Five of the gang rode horses, the rest huddled on two horse-drawn carts. In one of the carts a machine gun was set on a turret, and behind the machine gun, sitting on an old office chair, a young woman was stooped over-all decked out in black leather with silver b.u.t.tons glistening in the sun. Denis watched her with amus.e.m.e.nt. Vampires, of course, aren"t afraid of either the sun or silver. They can be killed just like people-it"s just...more difficult.
The town had become deserted. The residents did not dare look at what was happening even out of the corners of their eyes. However-in one of the windows of the cafe the drape was moving slightly. Denis smiled in that direction then returned his attention to the two carts and five riders.
When they saw Denis standing in the middle of the street, they slowed down slightly and began to move more cautiously, looking from side to side, c.o.c.king their rifles, and switching off the safeties on their revolvers and automatic weapons. Denis waited patiently until they completely surrounded him. The girl with the machine gun was chewing gum and gave him a look of scorn, but without animosity.
"What is this, some kind of f.u.c.king cowboy..." the leader-Anton Pavlovich, Denis remembered-said. He was middle-aged but not old-strong, with keen, intelligent eyes. He wore a gun in an open holster and rode the best horse. Since it wasn"t a question, Denis preferred to remain silent. "It was you who killed Andrei," Pavlovich said.
"Me," Denis said.
Pavlovich nodded, thinking. "Well," he said, "if that was your way of asking to join our gang, I"ll take you. I was tired of that soplyak anyway."
"Are you the Master?" Denis asked.
"What?"
"Are-you-the Master? That"s what the leader of a vampire pack is called. Or don"t you even know that much?"
A fat man riding beside Pavlovich laughed. The girl with the machine gun smiled.
Pavlovich sighed: "Kill him!"
The first bullet struck the girl with the machine gun right between the eyes.
Denis side-stepped right, pulling Pavlovich"s second-in-command down from his horse and throwing him onto the cart, knocking down the other gang members as if they were bowling pins. At the end of the cart, he lay still, his neck broken.
The second bullet tore through the heart of a man holding an automatic rifle.
The third targeted the face of a girl holding a shotgun. At the very last moment she jerked and the bullet tore off part of her ear, and so Denis had to shoot a fourth time.
The fifth and sixth bullets felled two guys with revolvers who were the spitting image of each other (brothers? twins?).
The last one, the seventh, entered the stomach of a man who"d tried to jump Denis-an Asian with shortly cropped hair and cold, merciless eyes.
Someone shot and missed.
Someone screamed.
The horses neighed and reared.
Denis danced between and among his remaining adversaries, breaking the necks of two of them and, with a single strike of his hand, tearing out the heart of a third. A teenager on the cart saw this, put his lips around the muzzle of his revolver, and shot himself.
The girl with the shotgun was hanging limply off the side of the cart, the weapon falling out of her dead fingers. Denis grabbed it and discharged one barrel into the head of a man on a horse; his head exploded into red mist.
"Tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta," Denis hummed like the rhythm of a foxtrot, counting the dead enemies. He decided not to count the young one who shot himself. The leader did not fit into the rhythm either; another end awaited him.
The remaining High Noon Vampires ran in all directions.
But the dance wasn"t over yet.
The second shotgun sh.e.l.l hit the guy with the hunting rifle in the back. He fell, writhing in the road"s dust. Denis then drove the b.u.t.t of the gun into the forehead of a scrawny man with crazed eyes who"d been running backwards, deftly shuffling his feet and giggling madly as if he had seen something amazingly funny.
"Tra-ta..." Denis said.
Three horses rushed along the road toward the sea. Denis switched the revolver to his other hand, emptied out the sh.e.l.ls, and snapped three bullets in.
"Tra-ta..." Denis finished humming and shot. Two of the horses started galloping faster, dislodging their deceased riders. One of the riders" feet got caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged for a few meters, then lost his boot and remained on the road, motionless.
Only the leader remained. With a little regret in his heart, Denis planted a bullet into the leg of the man"s horse. With surprising deftness, Pavlovich leapt down, but did not even try to get up-he just turned on his back and glared at Denis as he approached.
Denis slowly walked toward him.
Pavlovich pulled out a gun and fired off a single shot, but Denis kicked the weapon out of his hand, and grabbed Pavlovich"s jacket and pulled it tightly around him. "You missed," he said.
Denis shackled Pavlovich"s hands with his own belt, gagged his mouth with a handkerchief, and started dragging him toward the rail station.
The woman came out of the cafe when they were pa.s.sing by, holding a coffee cup somewhat shakily in her hands.
Denis looked into it. A cappuccino.
"You are quick," he said.
"You are even quicker," the woman said. Her daughter stood behind her, smiling.
"We must finish the horse off," Denis said. "Will you be able to do it? There are a lot of weapons back there."
"No more deaths," the woman said. "Even a lame horse is a living horse."
Denis drank his cappuccino. Pavlovich wheezed something unintelligible into his gag.
"Please, go away. Go away for G.o.d"s sake!" The woman shouted; her nerves couldn"t stand it any more.
"It will be better for you not to tell anyone exactly what you saw here," Denis said. He returned the unfinished cup to her and walked away, dragging the leader to the train station.
Barrels of fish stood on the platform, but there was no one around. Denis signaled to the approaching train himself and loaded the barrels onto a cargo car at the end of the train. He then threw the leader into the car and climbed aboard.
The train whistled and started off.
Denis stood for a while by the open door, looking at the town receding into the distance. Without looking, he caught Pavlovich as he made an attempt to jump off the train, and tossed him back into the car. Denis closed the door, approached the man, and pulled the gag out of his mouth.
"You G.o.d d.a.m.ned pridurok!" Pavlovich shouted. He was so terrified that he no longer was afraid of anything. "You pridurok! We"re not vampires! We just called ourselves "High Noon Vampires"! We"re an ordinary gang, understand? An ordinary gang!"
"I understand," Denis nodded.
"And this is our town!"
"Was your town," Denis said.
Pavlovich fell silent. He looked at Denis"s face for a moment, then stared at his chest. "I didn"t miss," he muttered. "I couldn"t have missed!"
Denis took off his jacket, revealing a hole from which slowly oozed a dark, dark liquid...that quite recently, just that morning, had been flowing in the veins of the doctor"s son. The cold, gray flesh surrounding the wound was already starting to heal.
"You didn"t miss," Denis said. "But it"s really difficult to kill us. Those who have died already don"t like to die again."
He was silent for a moment, looking at Pavlovich"s neck, then continued: "My Master doesn"t like it when a gang of con men call themselves vampires. We don"t like to kill very much. But we have to, sometimes; that"s what we are. But if we have a choice, we always choose to kill those who are even worse than we are."
The train"s wheels tapped out-tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta-and the rhythmical crash of the surf could be heard off in the distance.
The fish, layered with moist seaweed, stirred listlessly in the barrels.
Unlike Pavlovich, they lived all the way to the city.
This Is Now.
by Michael Marshall Smith.
Michael Marshall Smith is the author of several novels, including Only Forward, which won the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award and the British Fantasy Award, and The Servants, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He also publishes under the name Michael Marshall; his most recent novels under that pen name are Bad Things and The Intruders, the latter of which is being adapted into a miniseries to air on the BBC. His short fiction has been collected in three volumes, most recently in More Tomorrow & Other Stories.
This story, which first appeared in the BBC"s Vampire Cult Magazine, tells the story of a small group of friends, as they recall a formative event in their lives. It explores how big a gap there is between then and now, and all the things that can fall through that gap.
"Okay," Henry said. "So now we"re here."
He was using his "So entertain me" voice, and he was cold but trying not to show it. Pete and I were cold too. We were trying not to show it either. Being cold is not manly. You look at your condensing breath as if it"s a surprise to you, what with it being so balmy and all. Even when you"ve known each other for over thirty years, you do these things. Why? I don"t know.
"Yep," I agreed. It wasn"t my job to entertain Henry.
Pete walked up to the thick wire fence. He tilted his head back until he was looking at the top, four feet above his head. A ten-foot wall of tautly criss-crossed wire.
"Who"s going to test it?"
"Well, hey, you"re closest." Like the others, I was speaking quietly, though we were half a mile from the nearest road or house or person.
This side of the fence, anyhow.