The Turned Page 3

  With that, he and Gribbin both opened up with their M4s’, spraying automatic fire into the cellar. As they emptied their magazines Betty and Lou tossed Molotov cocktails past them and into the infected hiding in the shadows, just as the other posse members lit more and handed them over.

  Before long the widow’s basement was a raging fire-pit, with the squeals and screams of the infected children filling the air as they burned alive. Wylett and Gribbin didn’t need to shoot anymore, but they couldn’t let the children suffer, even if they were the turned. Reloading they emptied another magazine each, arcing automatic fire all around the flaming space, both wishing for the screaming to end.

  It was too much for Betty. She put her hands over her ears and burst into tears, stumbling forward, unable to take anymore. She looked up just as a tiny, flaming figure burst from the cellar and scurried along the scorched grass.

  Wylett dropped the M4 as he grabbed his magnum revolver, just as the flaming child launched itself at Betty, sinking its fangs into her face and throat as it manically snapped its jaw open and shut, the urge for blood still insatiable even as it burned. Lou grabbed his shotgun and started beating the tiny vampire, screaming incoherently as he desperately fought to save his wife.

  Deputy Gribbin ran forward as she pulled a stiletto dagger from her belt, taking a split second to focus her aim before burying the blade into the youngster’s flaming head, ripping it from Betty and onto the floor. Sheriff Wylett fired into it until the magnum was empty.

  He and Gribbin motioned for Daisey to carry on as the digger began ramming into each corner of the house, smashing it in on itself. Then they turned back to Betty and Lou, knowing nothing else was going to escape the flames as Wylett reloaded.

  The female proprietor of the Sheriff’s favourite diner was already dead, her blood staining the scorched soil as her husband held her. Lou didn’t cry as he lifted his wife of thirty years and carried her over to a tree, gently laying her down in the shade.

  He looked up at Wylett as Daisey continued to destroy the Chambers home, holding out his hand. ‘She’s gone, but I need to be sure there’s nothing left of her to turn, Jake.’

  The Sheriff nodded as he handed Lou his gun, turning his back as a single gunshot sounded, Lou ensuring his wife would find peace.

  Wylett looked over at Gribbin as the Deputy looked back at her boss, trying just as him to keep her emotions under wraps.

  Mercifully, Daisey’s skill with the digger truck was finally rewarded. The house of bitterness and death collapsed in on itself, coming to rest in a flaming heap no taller that the town’s Sheriff.

  Susan Chambers slowly opened her eyes, certain she could hear little Charlie screaming. She looked up at the flaming sun, only to realise that the blistering heat was not coming from the star but from the fire creeping across her ceiling, just as the roof caved in and crashed on top of her, destroying the home she had once so cherished.

  Hank finished up his impromptu service of passing, saying a few words of condolence for Travis, and more for Betty. Once done the posse of vampire hunters looked at one another, but it wasn’t the Sheriff who spoke, it was the new widower.

  ‘I’ll be damned if that good woman died in vain,’ Lou drawled, the emotion rattling through his voice. ‘So let’s get this shit done.’

  They all nodded, with no more words needed. Gribbin jumped into the police cruiser’s driving seat as she watched Sheriff Wylett in the rear view mirror. As he passed Daisey they held hands briefly, with his reacquainted old flame brushing the Sheriff’s cheek before she headed for the digger, and Wylett came over and climbed in next to his Deputy.

  ‘Hell of a crappy business,’ he said, turning to Gribbin. ‘Is there any point in me urging you to head to one of the safe zones, Lisa?’

  Gribbin smiled, realising how lucky she had been to have had a mentor such as Jake Wylett. ‘Are you going?’

  ‘Nope. I’m the captain of the ship, and if need be, I’ll be sinking with it.’

  ‘Then I guess we’re stuck with each other up on deck.’

  They both smiled as the Deputy floored the accelerator and led the convoy onto their next hunt.

  As they raced back along the road, passing the smouldering ash pile that had been the Chambers house, Sheriff Wylett and his Deputy were silent as he drove, both knowing they weren’t going to make it. Gribbin looked over at where they had slain Susan and the infected children, in what felt like an age ago.

  Now the sun was dropping, threatening to blink out before they could reach the safety of where they had started from in the morning. The Sheriff had only told her of the secret hideaway once he knew the pandemic was evolving into something that threatened their very existence.

  Brentwood had been designated a satellite safe zone during the nineteen seventies, when all people had to worry about was the Cold War and nuclear annihilation, not this people turning into vampire stuff. Various secret locations were picked, strategically placed across the US, all ready to house local officials or senate members if caught off-guard in-country. If needed the secret bolt-holes could even house the American President, in the event he was away from the White House and unable to make it to a statelier bunker.

  Underneath the two storey residence that housed Brentwood’s Mayor, a nondescript door in the back of the kitchen led down to the reinforced shelter designed to withstand the onslaught of a nuclear arsenal. With its filtered air supply and enough room to house twenty five people comfortably, more if needed, and with bunks and showers, the secret underground chamber had the potential to offer a relatively civilised safe haven. Mothballed in the nineties, it was still more than up to the job.

  When Sheriff Wylett lost his two other Deputies, he showed Gribbin where they would hold out. Any doubts to their dire predicament were dispelled for the Deputy upon realising the lengths to which they would have to go to in order to survive.

  And now they were racing to get there.

  Lisa Gribbin reached across and squeezed the hand of Wylett as he gripped the wheel. ‘I’m sorry about Daisey,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have a choice, Jake.’

  The Sheriff nodded, not taking his eyes off the road as he fought the urge to cry. He and his Deputy were covered in cuts, blood, soot and scratches, and reeking of the stench of death.

  The convoy they were leading had grown, numbering over twenty people in anything that could drive, but they were all new. The rest of the morning’s posse were dead.

  But Gribbin couldn’t afford herself the luxury of mourning, as her eyes locked onto the disappearing sun as it dropped below the treetops, jumping with a start as Sheriff Wylett’s bellowing voice ripped the Deputy from her observations.

  ‘Ambush!!!’

  6

  The police 4x4 skidded to a halt, smashing into the tree that had been laid across the road. Gribbin wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and shot forward, head-butting the dash and knocking herself out cold.

  As Sheriff Wylett reached across to her, whilst at the same time shouting into his radio, scanning for the infected, and trying to grab for his gun, his prized Deputy slumped in her seat.

  Oblivious to the ensuing panic and chaos, Lisa Gribbin’s concussed brain took the opportunity to digest the events of her afternoon.

  The first four houses they had come upon were relatively easy, each one burnt to the ground as Daisey battered them down. The weary posse had kept their distance, learning the lessons from earlier. As the infected hiding in the homes shrieked and thrashed in the flames, Sheriff Wylett and his people stood back with their guns pointing, but none of the four premises emitted anymore escaping vampires, and the posse moved onto their next target.

  The old schoolhouse had been turned into a homeless shelter, and seemed it would offer the least resistance of all. Single storey, with an aged wooden frame, the front double doors were open, offering a clear view of the entire space within. Even its large windows, evenly spaced down either side, were un-boarded and filling the space they w
ere all looking at with bright sunshine.

  But time was not on the vampire hunters’ side, and they still had properties down the road that Wylett knew to be infected. The decision was made to save time, avoiding the fire and destruction, instead they would just check the bathrooms.

  Hank led the way as they inched towards the two rooms at the rear, all eager to clear the property and move on. The Sheriff and his Deputy laid out their map on the bonnet of Lou’s pickup, confident that Hank could handle anything inside, with Daisey at his side, cradling her own shotgun as Lou and the other three followed.

  As Wylett planned their next move, a nagging thought had occurred to him. He stopped looking over the map as the nagging thought was joined by a subtle sound coming from somewhere close by, Gribbin hearing it too.

  The two of them walked to the entrance, seeing the group moving stealthily forward, and then they heard the sound again, under the floorboards. And as that happened, the nagging thought crystallized in Sheriff Wylett’s head.

  Basement!

  The old schoolhouse had a big, deep basement.

  ‘Hank!’ bellowed Wylett, the sound of his voice instantly met by a mass of scurrying from beneath the aged floorboards as his friend and the others spun around. ‘Get out of there!’

  Then the floor started to move, the wood splintering as it undulated. ‘Now!!!’

  The posse took a step, realising they were in trouble, before they all froze, looking down as the ground beneath their feet gave way.

  ‘No!’ Gribbin screamed, drawing her Glock pistol as she rushed forward, only to be grabbed by the Sheriff as the floorboards just inside the doorway exploded upwards and a mass of bloodied hands, grabbing and flailing with their razor talons, reached up out of the darkness.

  The two lawmakers emptied their guns into the infected snarling up at them, hitting one with every shot, the basement packed shoulder to shoulder with the turned.

  As the two quickly reloaded they looked across to where the posse had stood, just as the dust from the imploding floor settled, offering both a heartbreakingly clear view. Lou and the three others had gone, down somewhere amongst the crazed horde who were fighting each other, ripping into their fellow infected as they all tried to feast on the warm bodies. There were so many vampires Gribbin and Wylett couldn’t even see their missing colleagues.

  What they could see was Daisey and Hank.

  The wily taxidermist was two thirds back, stood on a section of floorboards still intact, attached to one of the oak pillars, just big enough for him to move a pace in either direction and no more. He wasn’t trying to clamber up to the ceiling or blasting away with his Remington at the bodies reaching up and snapping at his boot heels.

  Instead, Hank was motionless as he looked across at Daisey.

  Gribbin swallowed hard, her fear of the massed pit cancelled out by Daisey’s plight, and the look of despair on the Sheriff’s face. Wylett’s lover was dangling from the next pillar over from Hank, no more than fifteen feet from him, and a good thirty feet from Wylett and Gribbin, but she may as well have been on the other side of the moon for their chances of reaching her.

  Between Daisey, Hank and the other two there was a sea of bobbing heads, each snapping and snarling as they smashed into each other trying to reach their next meal. Gribbin imagined herself trampling across the tops of the infected to get to the desperate woman, trying to convince herself something could be done.

  Jake Wylett was silent, staring at the woman he knew he should have made his wife, lost. It was the first time Gribbin had seen the bear-of-a-man scared. But Daisey wasn’t screaming. The floor beneath her had gone completely, and she had her legs wrapped around the splintered pillar as her hands gripped onto a rusty light fitting screwed into it, which was shortly to give way.

  Hank was looking up at the ceiling, silent as he tried to work out how to shimmy up his pillar and across the rafters to get to her.

  And still Wylett and Daisey were silent as they looked at one another, the Sheriff unblinking as he stood motionless. Gribbin realised the obvious. She had known the two had been lovers once, but she had been wrong. The two were still lovers, Wylett the rascal, keeping their relationship secret even from his Deputy.

  But the Sheriff’s sweetheart couldn’t last out, her generous frame rapidly losing its fight against the creaking light fitting and gravity.

  ‘Jake, honey,’ Daisey called out, trying to be brave for her man. ‘I don’t wanna end up down there.’ She smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘You need to do it . . . It’s alright.’

  Wylett nodded as he tried to smile back, his eyes wet as he raised up his magnum, taking his time to aim, and a last look into the eyes of the woman he clearly loved.

  ‘Sweet dreams, princess,’ he rasped, squeezing the trigger.

  The bullet hit Daisey square in her forehead, ensuring she was dead before the reaching hands caught her, and she disappeared out of sight.

  Deputy Gribbin tensed her jaw shut as tears rolled down her cheeks, but she still aimed steady with the M4 at the infected still reaching for Hank. Wylett turned away for a moment, wiping his eyes before turning back. He blew his cheeks out, stowing away what he had done for later, instead focusing on his friend.

  Gribbin looked up at the ceiling, seeing a filthy skylight window, just back from Hank’s pillar. ‘I think I can climb up on the outside,’ she said, looking at Wylett, his eyes tear-stained. ‘Maybe drop a rope down to him. Maybe . . .’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, young lady!’ called Hank.

  She and the Sheriff looked over at him. ‘If the roof’s anything like this floor,’ Hank called over as he pointed at the infected lurching up at him, ‘you’ll be down there before you know it. And I ain’t allowing that.’

  He forced a smile as he switched his shotgun from hand as he took off his blazer, dropping it into the hole. Hank took a moment to smooth down his white shirt, surprisingly clean considering, before he tightened the silver wolf’s head clasp securing the thin, braided leather of his bolo tie. Next he took off his fedora, throwing it frisbee-style across the heads of the infected, laughing to himself as it somehow landed on one of them.

  Finally, the award winning taxidermist and lifelong friend of Sheriff Wylett, brushed out his handlebar moustache, before securing his Colt.45 in his belt, checking his worn bible was in his back pocket and taking a last hold of his wooden crucifix.

  Readying himself, he clasped the Remington with both hands.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, missy,’ smiled Hank as he winked at Gribbin, before turning to Wylett. ‘Guess I’m done draggin’ your sorry ass out of anymore scrapes, Jakey-boy.’

  Before Sheriff Wylett could find the right words, Hank gave a whoop of defiance and jumped into the basement, blasting away as he fell. The two law-keepers closed down their emotions as they aimed and fired, slotting the nearest ones’ going for Hank, but it was a short-lived battle as the infected swarmed over him, knocking the Remington from his hands.

  Gribbin tried to ignore Hank’s white shirt turning red as he was bitten into, but he still managed to draw the Colt and down a few more, giving him enough time to press the barrel of the gun to his head and make good his exit.

  Sheriff Wylett didn’t let up, reloading again and again as he shot into the vampires, until Gribbin reached across and gently pushed the magnum’s barrel down.

  ‘That’ll do,’ she offered. ‘We need to save our ammo.’

  Wylett had looked at her, rage and sorrow in his face, but he still nodded, knowing she was right. ‘I’m done.’

  Gribbin was about to suggest they call it a day and start heading back, just as the outside doors to the basement, set level with the ground, burst open and the horde charged forth, screaming in pain as the sun’s UV rays sank into them. But their maddening hunger propelled them on as they charged at the two remaining members of the Brentwood posse.

  7

  They fought back to back, shooting anything and
everything that came at them. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the starved vampires were attacking in the daylight, Wylett and Gribbin wouldn’t have stood a chance at the massed attack. But the emaciated infected had become delirious, their predator stealth abandoned as they craved their food source.

  The Sheriff and his Deputy managed to retreat to their 4x4, throwing the rear door open to keep a constant flow of ammunition as they fired their M4s’ relentlessly, each stopping only to bang in a fresh magazine as the other covered them.

  But, even though the turned were slowed and pained by the sun, some still got through the bullets. Some even got close enough to slash the lawmakers with their razor talons before being cut down. Both Wylett and Gribbin caught a blow, on their legs and arms, even down Gribbin’s cheek and across Wylett’s chin, but they held their ground.

  Finally the numbers eased, enough for Wylett to take over solo as Gribbin reached in and grabbed the cool-box of Molotov cocktails, lighting them up and pitching each through the air and into the basement. The flames caught the dry wood in seconds, filling the pit with fire and then creeping up to consume the entire structure.

  And still they came, the infected leaping out from their lair in a final bid for survival, charging balls of flame with fired limbs flailing as they hurled themselves at their tormentors. Burnt hands and arms added to the injuries of Wylett and his Deputy as they still held their ground, fighting hand to clawed hand.

  ‘It’s about that time!’ Wylett had called out as Gribbin raced over to the digger, only for her to jump back out of the cab as she realised that Daisey must have taken the keys with her, probably shoving them in her jeans pocket through force of habit.

  Gribbin didn’t say why she was racing over to Lou’s pickup, not wanting to remind Wylett of the pain of losing Daisey. She threw the truck in reverse and rammed it into the first corner of the raging inferno that had been the school house, speeding to the next as the flaming wood crashed in on itself.