Chapter 47

December Twenty-fourth 7:30 p.m. EST 6:30 p.m. local time

Mark joined George and his wife, Theresa, a petite, plumply pretty blonde, in loudly applauding the performance of Jill, two, and George, Jr., three, as they finished a very (very) long rendition of 'Silent Night.' He was forced to admit that the toddlers looked adorable in flannel pajamas covered in pictures of candy canes and tree ornaments.

At the disturbance, Barney, the family's dog, a mutt that looked like a miniature, fat, black beagle, looked up reproachfully from his seat on Mark's lap. Mark reached down to scratch the beast behind the ears until it again lowered its head and resumed snoring and drooling on his leg.

"That was great, guys!" George said, his voice mellow from a number of Old Fashioned's. "Now, who's ready for some football?"

"Sounds good to me. Who's playing tonight anyway?" Mark asked.

"Uh, Tennessee and ... someone else."

Mark chuckled. "A fan after my own heart. If the Steelers aren't playing, I don't pay much attention."

"At least you have a local NFL team. We mostly have to make do with college ball. Gotta love those Sooners! ... Huh. That's odd."

Mark looked over and saw that the television screen was the uniform blue that had largely replaced screens full of static when a channel was unavailable. With a frown, George pressed buttons on the remote, but the next five or six channels he turned to were the same.

"We did pay the satellite bill this month, didn't we, darlin'?" he asked Theresa.

"Sure did, hun."

Barking ferociously, Barney leaped from Mark's lap and ran to the front door in the corner of the small living room. The tiny dog continued to bark as it pawed at the door.

"He probably needs out," George observed. "I saw Junior slipping him a bunch of ham during dinner. I'll go grab the leash. What the hell, as long as I'm going to be outside anyway, I'm going to sneak a smoke, too. Want to come with us, Mark?"

"Sure."

As Mark was reaching for his coat, Barney's barks turned to whimpers. Tucking his tail between his legs, he scurried back across the living room and into the depths of the one story house. During his flight, he knocked a number of ornaments from the bottom branches of the artificial Christmas tree. Several shattered with loud pops.

"What's gotten into him?" George asked, bemused.

At the same time, Theresa let out a cry of dismay. Gesturing wildly between the broken glass and the dog, she shouted, "Darn it! That one was my great grandmother's. It was an antique! Bad dog, Barney! Bad dog!"

She walked briskly out to the kitchen. As she was returning with a broom, a loud knock sounded on the door.

"I'm coming," George called out.

Mark crouched down to help Theresa gather up the larger pieces of broken glass. Junior also toddled over to assist, but Theresa scooped him away with a gentle admonishment.

From the front door, George said, "Hi guys. Merry Christmas. I know you're on duty, but can I offer you a drink to help keep you warm?"

Mark looked up in time to see a flash of teeth as one of the uniformed officers leaped inside, locking his mouth on George's throat and forcing him to the floor. Junior and Jill squealed in fright and began to cry. Theresa merely stared, too shocked to move.

Grabbing the broom from her hands, Mark brought his knee down hard on the handle just above the straw head. It broke with a snap. Yelling with fear as much as anything, he charged across the room with the broom stick held before him. More by luck than design, the jagged end struck the attacker nearly in the center of the armpit with enough momentum to drive past the ribs. After a violent spasm, the vampire went limp on top of George's quivering body.

From the still open doorway, another police officer gaped at the scene in disbelief. He reached for his sidearm, but he winced in pain as his hand hovered over his holster. With a grunt of frustration, he rushed forward, his mouth opening in a snarl to reveal descending fangs.

"You son of a bitch!" he yelled as he rapidly closed the distance. "I'm going to drain you dry."

"I bet you say that to all the boys," Mark quipped, trying to put more bravery in his words than he felt.

He struggled to pull the broom handle free, but he couldn't get it loose in time. He looked to George for help, but his new friend was lying motionless with eyes closed. Blood squirted in spurts from a gaping wound in his neck in time with the beating of his heart.

Mark scrambled backwards as the vampire stalked him. Looking over his shoulder, he could see that Theresa had her back to them, clutching the children protectively to her chest with one hand while she frantically dialed her phone with the other. With a sigh, he interposed himself between her and the creature.

The vampire reached out and grabbed Mark by the front of his shirt, lifting him off his feet. Mark lashed out with a upper cut, but the monster barely grunted and then sneered at him with contempt. Switching tactics, he tried to hold the jaws back from his throat, but, despite straining with all of his might, the fangs moved ever closer.

He could tell that the monster was playing with him, dragging out the kill to give him time to fully appreciate his predicament and succumb to despair. The jaws drew near. The radio on the officer's belt squawked, and a name was announced.

"Run, Theresa!" Mark yelled. "Take the kids and get out of here!"

Theresa stood, but, before she could move, the undead struck her with a backhand that knocked her across the room. She slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor. The children continued to wail where they stood.

Mark could smell the creature's sickly sweet breath and feel the sharp tips of teeth against his skin. As a last act of defiance, he brought his knee up hard into its crotch. Sucking wind, it released him as it doubled over.

"Ha!" Mark cried out exultantly. "The big, tough vampire can't take a shot to the danglies..."

The creature flailed out to catch Mark with a vicious blow to the side of the head, interrupting his taunt and sending him down to lie dazed on the floor next to Theresa.

Shaking his head in an attempt to gather his senses, Mark struggled to rise. The vampire was already straightening and turning its rage filled eyes toward him. He looked around desperately for a weapon, but there was nothing. The vampire stepped forward, its lip curling upwards in a predatory smile. Suddenly, its eyes went wide and it jerked violently before sagging to the floor.

George, pale and staggering, released the broom handle that now protruded from the second vampire's back and clamped a hand back over the jetting wound in his neck. Blood immediately ran out between the cracks in his fingers and down his arm.

Reaching down, Mark pried open the vampire's jaws and stuck his hand in its mouth. After swishing his fingers around the cheeks and tongue, he pulled his hand, now wet with spit, free and jumped over to where George was sagging to his knees. A look of disgust crossed George's face as he feebly tried to stop Mark from touching him with it.

"Trust me," Mark commanded, gently pulling away the hand that George was using to cover his neck.

As he worked the saliva into the wound, the flow of blood quickly came to a stop. He returned to the vampire to get enough for a second treatment. When he was finished, there was no sign of the injury, but George was still weak from blood loss.

They next tended to Theresa. While dazed, and possibly suffering from a mild concussion, she was otherwise unharmed.

As he stepped back to allow his wife to stand, George trod on the remote. The familiar CNN format appeared on the screen.

The confused and slightly panicked anchorwoman was saying, " ... live from Los Angeles. For those of you just joining us, our offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and New York City abruptly stopped broadcasting approximately a half hour ago. In fact, it appears that all communications to the major cities on the east coast are down. We'll be giving you more information on the cause as we receive it..."

"Fuck. We were too late," Mark whispered despondently as he stared at the TV.

"We need to call the station," George said as he stooped to pick Theresa's cell phone up from the floor.

"No!" Mark yelled, grabbing the phone from George's hands. Pointing to the radio which had continued to announce a few names every minute, he explained, "The police are compromised. If you call in, more will come here to kill you. Do you know the phone numbers of any other policemen who were on day shift in the past few days?"

"Uh, yeah. We have a phone tree..."

"Don't bother," Theresa interrupted. "The phones are dead. I tried calling when George was attacked."

"Do you have a land line?" Mark asked.

George stumbled out into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he announced, "It's dead, too."

"What about the internet?"

Theresa walked into another room to open a web browser. "Down."

When George returned to the living room, he asked, "I still don't understand why we can't just use the radio, or why we can't call the station. I mean, shouldn't we tell them that some ... uh, rogue cops are running around trying to kill people?"

Mark sighed. "It's a long story, and you're not going to believe it. While I explain, let's gather supplies. You wouldn't happen to be a bow hunter would you? If not, do you have anything sharp and made of wood? And maybe a mallet?"

"Uh, no, I'm not an archery hunter. I do have a bundle of tomato stakes out in the shed, and a five pound, short handled sledge. Will that do?"

"It'll have to."

Mark quickly searched the downed police officers. Taking one sidearm for himself, he passed the other to Theresa. George took the hint and went to the bedroom to retrieve his own and a box of ammunition. Mark then tucked one of the radios in his coat and went through their pockets.

The one that had attacked George had a two page list of names and addresses. Next to each name was a letter. Scanning down the list, Mark saw that the letters were limited to P, J, L, S, F, C or M. Several of the entries had handwritten corrections indicating that the person named would be at different address for the night.

Each of the names on the first page, nearly all of which had 'F's, ' 'P's' or 'M's' next to them, had been crossed off. On the second page, George's name was the first that hadn't been lined through. He was the last 'P' on the list. The majority of those below him had C's or L's with a smattering of 'F's.' The single 'S' on the list appeared next to a name a few entries down from George's.

"What do you make of this?" Mark asked as he passed the list to George.

George leafed back and forth through the pages for a moment, his forehead creased with concentration. Slowly, he said, "This list is fairly well organized. Everyone on it lives in Terrace Drive, Renaissance, Fair Heights, Mid Tulsa ... Hell, every neighborhood between Eleventh and Fifteenth Streets. They did one pass to get the 'P's' and 'M's' and then they would have gone back through to get the others.

"Based on the names, I think I know what most of the letters mean. The 'P' definitely means police officer. It looks like 'J' is judge. 'L' is lawyer. 'C' might be city official. I'm not completely sure about 'M, ' but one of the M's is a reporter who's a bit of a local celebrity, so its probably media. I don't know the 'S' or any of the 'F's.'

As he considered the obvious implications, his expression became even more fearful, something that Mark wouldn't have believed was possible. "The 'P' above me is my supervisor. His name is crossed off. Does that mean..."

Mark interrupted before George could finish the statement. "There's only one way to be sure. Let's get the stakes and hammer and we'll head over there. If you have any garlic powder, grab that, too."

As they marched out to the shed through the still falling rain, Mark gave them the short version of what had happened in Pittsburgh, what he suspected was happening now, and why he hadn't been able to tell them earlier. He concluded with, "That's why CNN is still on the air. They broadcast directly to satellite from L.A., and it's not dark there yet."

They gaped at him wordlessly, not wanting to believe, but they had seen and, in George's case felt, the fangs of their attackers.

"How in the hell are the three of us supposed to fight a city full of vampires?" George asked numbly.

"I honestly have no idea," Mark replied. "However, there is one small ray of sunshine. The second one wanted to use his gun on me, but didn't. I could see that the attempt caused him pain. Apparently, they've been ordered not to use their sidearms while, um, doing their lists. That will give us a small advantage. While bullets won't kill them, they can knock them down long enough to finish them off with stakes. I'm going to be brutally honest: it takes a lot of bullets to knock them down, and they won't stay down for long. When they get up ... well, they're ungodly fast and strong, and they'll probably be pretty pissed off."

He hesitated and then let out a long sigh. "There's something else you should know. You're going to hate it, but its important. There are two kinds of vampires, ones that can talk and ones that can't. The ones that can't are little more than animals; so you're doing them a favor when you kill them. The ones that can ... well, inside they're still the same people you knew; the same people they always were. However, they're absolute slaves to the one that made them; they have to follow every command to the letter. That's good and bad. It's bad because some of the people we will have to kill tonight to survive don't really want to hurt us and are decent people inside. On the other hand, if we can find the top vamps in the city and kill them, we would free the ones under him, her or them."

"And that would stop all the killing?" George asked.

Again Mark hesitated. "It would lessen it. They're still vampires who have to kill to feed, and ... well, they need to feed on people, at least to some extent."

George looked confused. "If they have to kill people, why does it matter if they're still decent folks inside? We would still have to put them down at some point. Right?"

Mark reached up to rub his forehead. "I just don't know how to answer that," he said quietly. "In any event, we should get out here, both to check on your friend and to be somewhere else when more vamps come to check on the two on your floor."

Before they left, Mark used his cell phone to take pictures of the dead vampires, making certain that their fangs were showing. They would inevitably want to tell others what was happening and they would need at least some proof for their warnings to be taken seriously, at least in time for the warnings to do any good. He also tucked a jar of garlic powder that Theresa handed him into his pocket.

As they exited the tidy brick house and piled into the Grand Am, George and Mark up front and Theresa squeezed between the child seats in the rear with Barney on her lap, a loud shout emerged from the place across the street. Looking in through the windows, Mark could see a number of happy people holding up their glasses in toast, completely oblivious to what was happening in the city around them.

"We have to warn them," George said flatly.

"What would we tell them? We don't even know where we could send them that would be safe," Mark replied sadly.

In the end they compromised. The party goers responded to their report of a terrorist attack underway in the city as the media had trained them to: with fearful and docile obedience to authority. They quickly extinguished the lights and shuffled down into the basement, locking the doors behind them. Several of the less inebriated set out to warn neighbors who weren't in attendance to do the same.

When they returned to the car, Mark insisted on driving: George was still groggy and unsteady on his feet.

"Where to?" he asked as he climbed behind the wheel.