Dead and Proud of It
by Nicholas Paschall
"The things that go bump in the dark have been found... perhaps we should have kept the lights off..."
A rogue vampire who has forgotten his name serves as muscle for the vampire elite, who allow him a few weeks a year to freely hunt as he pleases. But after abducting a school bus with twenty-eight children on it, he finds that his lair has been revealed to someone. That someone is in the Police, and they show up as he's dealing with the children. Of the twenty-eight, only four are found.
Arrested and beaten, the mad vampire plots his escape and then goes into a state of hibernation. Upon waking, he sets out on a bloody path of revenge-fueled rampage, with ghosts, junkies, and a man named Horace all standing in his way. Watch out world, because this vampire is not afraid to bare his teeth. And his bite is far worse than his bark. This horror thriller dances along the edges of politics, religion, and sexuality without every crossing the line into themes that would make it a "naughty" book. Be ready for thrills and a roller coaster ride of surprises as the story unfolds before you.
Excerpt
The van begins to roll, steadily gaining speed as we begin to drive away from my refuge. Kneeling next to the officer, I strip off his vest and armor, tossing his gun to the side. Pulling off my tattered shirt, I tug his shirt free and pull it over his head. While kind of large on me, it’s much better than the bloody rags I’d been wearing.
Wiping a finger over the gash in his forehead, I pop the finger in my mouth and moan at the sinful decadence of it. Leaning forward, I tear into his throat with abandon, pulling at muscles and sinew as his veins burst fluid into the back of my mouth, the deliciously hot life warming my cold body as I gulped it down in time with his heartbeat.
I spend the next few minutes eating, draining his body of blood and stripping away the juicier chunks of flesh on him, popping them into my mouth with glee, chewing thoroughly around the gristle and fat. The padded van floor is now soaked through with blood while the officer is now paler than I normally am.
What a shame Shut Up had to die like this, I giggled as I move to a crouch. If he’d been polite I would have just knocked him out.
Scooping up the automatic weapon, I pull the magazine out, casually checking the amount of ammunition left in the clip. Full, it would seem.
Slamming the clip back in, I move up to the wall separating the metal tomb with the cab of the van, the only thing creating an opening being the small slit between the two; putting my ear to the wall, I try and pinpoint where the driver is exactly. Smiling as I hear his slow heartbeat through the thin sheet metal, I line up the automatic weapon to the wall.
“Knock knock!” I shouted out before pulling the trigger, letting loose a torrent of bullets into the metal, pulling the gun back and forth and up and down as I puncture dozens, hundreds of holes in the van’s interior. The van careens immediately as the bullets obviously strike home true, punching holes into the driver that seem to have taken away his ability to drive safely.
Dropping the gun, I move up to punctured steel and slip my fingers through the holes, pulling and wrenching the it apart, granting me access to the cab. The driver is dead, or dying, blood draining from his body at a rapid rate as perhaps twenty of the bullets had gone through his body, stopping at the bulletproof cover that hung over his chest.
I smile at the irony.
“Move over, your driving days are over,” I said as I pull the gurgling corpse from the driver’s seat with one hand, using my other to grab the wheel of the vehicle. Slipping into the squishy seat, I quickly move to begin driving as safely as possible; hoping the sudden change didn’t draw too much attention.
The radio on the dash crackles to life. “Dan, you ok in there? Dan?”
Well shit.
I scoop up the dispatch device, pushing down the flashing red button in hopes that it’ll let me speak over the radio. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just hit a pothole and heard something in the back. The vamp is still chained up.”
The radio goes silent for a few minutes as I drive along the darkened road, my headlights shining on the van in front of me, my side view mirror showing me there’s another van behind me, effectively boxing me in. Adjusting the side view mirror a bit, I squint as I try and ascertain if the driver behind me is suspecting anything.
I see, just barely behind the tinted glass, movement in the vehicle behind me.
“I think they saw me…” I muttered beneath my (lack of) breath. Bullets ping off the side of my vehicle in rapid succession, like rain on a tin roof. “Yes, yes they did.”
I spin the wheel to the right taking a sharp turn off the dirt road, barreling into the forest around us. A screech of tires tells me that the van behind me is moving to follow me, unfortunately. Humming to myself as I weave through the tall trees, scraping the sides of the van with loud screeches into various trunks, I mildly note how unwieldy this vehicle actually is.
BAM!
A small tree cracks beneath the front bumper of the van as I drive through what was once a young elm tree. What it lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for in durability! I let out a whoop as I test the shocks of the SWAT van, careening down a gradual hill, cracking through and along trees as I go, the other officers hot on my heels.
“Don’t… stop… thinking about tomorrow!” I sing merrily as I fishtail, slamming the back of my van into a thick oak before slamming on the gas, tearing off in a new direction. I can hear the other vans struggling to keep up with me, their desire to have a drivable vehicle holding them back in their pursuit.
The ratta-ratta-ratta of automatic fire screams through the night, a couple bullets bouncing off the resilient hide of the van as I continue barreling through the darkened forest. As fun as this is, I truly need to formulate a plan; according to the digital clock on the dash, dawn is but a few hours away, and I can’t let myself become trapped out in these woods after going through so much to escape.
“Huh… what to do, what to do…” I muttered, looking through the cracked windshield in search of an answer.
Breaking through the forest line, I come upon a vast expanse of grassy hills and rocky ridges. “This looks promising…” I grinned, spinning the steering wheel towards the closest ridgeline. Jumping up and down as the van rolls over the hills, the shocks doing little to soften the bouncy ride, I continued singing along as I rapidly approach the cliff. If memory serves me right, this should be a fairly steep drop. Pennsylvania is notorious for hills and ridges, the semi-mountainous terrain making for a beautiful landscape, and in this case, a great avenue for escape.
The radio crackled back to life. “Vampire! Stop now and we’ll go easy on you! There’s nowhere for you to go!”
Pulling the mic close, I push the button as I stare ahead. “I respectfully disagree, good sirs. I told you I’d end up filing against you all for assault. Well, consider this my report.”
The van launches off the edge of the cliff, getting a good deal of airtime as it hovers briefly in the air, before gravity greedily latches onto the heavy metal box, pulling it towards the ground.
“Well, got to go. Have a good night gentlemen.” I say before tearing the radio from the dash and kicking open the driver’s side door. Before I can leap from the tumbling ton of metal, I hear a low groan from behind me.
Turning, I catch a glimpse of the officer that I’d shot up, reaching out and grasping the end of the wet black shirt I’d liberated from my captor.
“Wow, you guys are persistent. And you have terrible luck.” I laughed, launching myself from the spinning vehicle, flying from the van into the brisk night air to slam into the cliff side.
Slamming into the dry, dusty rock with a splat, I scrabble against the stone and the dirt, pulling at stray roots and branches as I struggle to find purchase. For a brief moment, fear enters my mind as I cannot find a good hand hold, but my fear is short-lived; I hook my fingers into the stone cliff, my toes finding purchase beneath me. A distant crash far below, as well as a sudden waft of heat and a flash of light, brings a smile to my face.
That guy truly had horrible luck.
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Author Bio
Nicholas Paschall is a precocious ghoul happy in his graveyard, spinning yarns with the fresh entrails of his latest victim. He has a degree in History and loves to research old stories and forgotten lore, and publishes as much as he can. He is married with two dogs and no children, seeing as he ate them to make a short story. He can be found muttering to himself at his blog or on Twitter (@Nelfeshne), so feel free to drop him a line!
