Yes, fellow undead lovers another Vampire Trilogy. I consider that a
good thing and those that know me and follow my on-line work know that I
am a vampire fanatic. By that I mean real vampires, the undead
creatures that prey on humans for survival, not the glorified sissy boy
vampires that keep getting shoved down our throats. If you’ve read Justin’s Cronin’s The Passage and Guillermo Del Toro
and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain, you will absolutely love The Vampire
Hunters. -- Peter Schwotzer of Famous Monster of Filmland
Scott M. Baker's The Vampire Hunters is a gut-wrenching, fast-paced horror thriller that takes you from the
back streets of Washington to the rat infested sewer systems below. You
cheer for both the hunter and the hunted as the author rains battle
scenes with stomach turning death and destruction around every corner. -- Fangoria
THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS TRILOGY BOOK I
THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS
EVEN AT 10:00 in
the evening, Union Station thrived with activity. Despite the hour, scores of
people bustled around the main concourse. Passengers disembarking from, or
waiting to board, their late-night train. Family and friends gathering to greet
them or see them off. Porters hauling luggage to the appropriate platform.
Cleaning crews sweeping the concourse and emptying trash cans. Shop owners
peddling books, magazines, and last-minute souvenirs to weary travelers. And a
vampire on the prowl for food.
Drake originally picked up its trail on the Mall, a prime
hunting ground for vampires. Spotting the thing had been easy enough. On a
balmy spring night it was the only figure walking along the Mall wearing a
soiled red windbreaker with the hood pulled tightly over its head. Before Drake
could close in to verify and make the kill, however, the vampire strayed from its
usual pattern. Leaving the Mall, the vampire set off into downtown Washington,
following Constitution Avenue, a route that provided it with more opportunities
to feed. Drake had followed at a discrete distance, waiting for a chance to
corner the evil and eliminate it. With so many people around, though, that
chance had not materialized. When the vampire turned onto Louisiana Avenue and
headed for Union Station, Drake hurried to catch up. He was still far enough
behind that when he entered the train station fifteen seconds after the
vampire, the thing already had melded into the crowd.
Drake now wandered the concourse, hunting his undead prey.
That turned out to be far from easy. Union Station had two levels, each with a
labyrinthine maze of corridors housing gift shops and food stalls. Beyond the
station lay a multi-level parking garage, loading platforms, and maintenance
yard. Drake scanned the area, vainly looking for a figure in a red windbreaker.
So as not to look suspicious, he stopped occasionally at a bank of computer
monitors listing the arrival/departure notifications, using the chance to scan
waiting passengers.
He had just stepped away from a bank
of monitors at the west end of the concourse when the cellular phone in the
carry case on his belt began to ring. Only one person had the number—Alison
Monroe. She had followed him from the Mall in their midnight-black Dodge Ram
and now sat parked in front of Union Station, ready to move at a moment’s
notice. Drake reached down and pressed the CALL button, then spoke into the
microphone of his headset.
“What’s up?”
“Any luck?”
“Nothing,” Drake sighed.
“Sounds like par for the course for you,” she teased.
Drake smiled. “If you think you can do better, you’re
welcome to try. I’d love to sit in the truck once in a while and let you do the
boots on the ground.”
A chuckle came through the headset. “Sorry, boss. You don’t
pay me enough for that shit. So what do we do now?”
“I’m beginning to think our friend was on to being tailed,
and led us here so he could lose us.”
“You want me to circle the station and see if I can spot
him?”
“No, sit tight for now. I want to give the station one more
sweep, then…”
Drake sniffed. Almonds. No, more like ammonia—the smell of
the putrefying flesh of a vampire.
“Boss, are you okay?”
“Hang on. I may be on to something.” Drake searched the
concourse and spotted a figure in a red windbreaker as it disappeared into the
men’s bathroom. Breaking into a jog, Drake headed after it. “I think I’ve found
our friend.”
“Be careful.”
As Drake approached the men’s bathroom, he slowed his pace
and looked around. No one was paying any attention to him. Reaching under his
leather jacket, he pulled out one of the three wooden stakes he kept secure in
a special pouch stitched into the jacket lining. Holding the base so the shaft
rested against his right wrist and inner arm, he stepped into the bathroom.
The place reeked of decomposed flesh and the acrid smell of
urine. Drake swallowed hard to force down the nausea that welled up in his
throat. No one stood at the urinals. Keeping his back to the wall, Drake
quietly moved across the bathroom to the section containing the stalls. Still
no one. He stopped to listen, but only heard the whirring of an exhaust fan and
the flow of running water from a broken toilet.
And a whimper.
Dropping to one knee and kneeling over, Drake examined the
stalls. The last one on the right contained two sets of legs. He stood and
raced to the stall, kicking open the door. A young boy, no more than ten, was
sprawled backwards on the toilet, paralyzed with fear. The thing in the red
windbreaker towered over the child, its head inches from the boy’s neck. One
hand with talon-like fingernails pushed down on the boy’s shoulder while the
other pushed his head in the opposite direction, exposing the youngster’s
throat.
At the intrusion, the thing turned to glare at Drake. It had
a pallid face straight from the depths of hell. Black matted hair hung over a
slightly-protruding and deeply-furrowed forehead. A pair of blood-red eyes, the
yellow pupils of which seemed to glow, leered from sunken sockets. A set of
upper and lower fangs had replaced the cuspids, each fang two inches long and
razor sharp. The sunken cheeks and gray pallor indicated that the thing had not
eaten in a while. And it was not happy about being disturbed in the middle of a
meal. Its cracked lips drew back in a snarl as an animalistic hiss filled the
stall.
Drake raised his arm to plunge the stake into the vampire.
The thing lunged at him unexpectedly, its hands connecting with Drake’s chest
and throwing him backwards with the force of three men. Drake sailed across the
bathroom, crashing through the door of the opposite stall and slamming into the
toilet tank. Luckily, he kept his grip on the stake. Despite the pain and disorientation,
he raised the stake to defend himself. Instead of pursuing its attack, the
vampire hissed at Drake and bolted for the exit.
Drake scrambled to his feet and raced into the concourse in
time to see the vampire duck into a walkway between a pair of stores, heading
for the main entrance. Drake took off after it.
“Alison!” Drake practically yelled into the headset. “I have
a snuffy heading for the main entrance. Cut him off.”
No response.
“Alison!”
Still nothing. Reaching for the cellular phone, his hand
touched the empty carrying case and the dangling cord of the headset. Great.
Things were going from bad to worse.
OUT IN THE Ram, Alison listened to
the battle unfold. She heard the metallic clang of the stall door being kicked
open, followed by a hiss and body contact. Then the connection went dead.
“Boss, are you there? Boss?”
Reaching into the gym bag on the passenger seat, Alison
pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and opened the breech to make sure it was loaded
with the special ammo—two shells, the pellets of which had been soaked in holy
water. She snapped the barrel closed and reached for the door handle.
Alison saw the vampire race out of Union Station onto the
sidewalk. It frantically looked around for a means of escape, and found it. A
tanker truck sat idle farther down Massachusetts Avenue, its flashers blinking.
The driver stood near the cab asking directions from a young man in a business
suit. Running over to the truck, the vampire began to crawl up into the cab.
The driver, a burly man weighing at least two hundred and fifty pounds, grabbed
the vampire by the shoulders and pulled it back onto the street. Spinning
around, the vampire clutched the driver by his neck and hurled him across the
street into the side of a parked SUV. Even from this distance, Alison heard the
metallic thud and the shattering of glass. The vampire turned to confront the
young man in the business suit, but he and several other bystanders already had
started running. In what seemed like a single flowing motion, the vampire
climbed up into the cab and slid in behind the steering wheel. With a hiss of
airbrakes, the truck pulled out onto Massachusetts Avenue.
Drake emerged from Union Station, his attention immediately
drawn to the commotion to his right. Seeing the assaulted driver and the truck
as it pulled away, Drake quickly assessed what had happened. Without
hesitating, he raced off after the truck, trying to reach the cab. He made it
as far as the rear wheels of the tanker when the truck shifted gears and
accelerated. Cutting in behind the trailer as it passed by, Drake grabbed the
rear access ladder and jumped on. He paused just long enough to make sure of
his footing, and then started to climb.
Shifting into drive, Alison pushed her foot down on the
accelerator. The Ram’s engine thundered to life. She set off after the truck.
“He definitely doesn’t pay me enough for this shit.”
DRAKE PULLED HIS way to the top of
the ladder just as they rolled past Georgetown Law School. From this vantage
point, he spotted a slow-moving Cadillac in the left lane blocking their path.
Drake felt the truck shift gears and increase speed. Moments later, a jolt
rocked the entire trailer as the cab slammed into the car, propelling it
forward. Rather than attempt to get out of the way, however, the Cadillac’s
driver panicked and applied his brakes. This time the truck crashed into the
Cadillac. The second, heavier jolt caused Drake to lose his footing and nearly
fall off of the ladder.
A sickening screech of metal scraping against metal made Drake
look up. Being pushed along by the truck, the Cadillac lost control. Its front
end swayed back and forth, and then finally veered sharply to the right. The
car almost made it out of the way when the truck rammed into its rear wheel
well. The Cadillac spun around in a near one hundred and eighty degree turn
until its front end slid underneath the truck’s tandem wheels. Drake held on
tight. The trailer hooked the Cadillac’s front end and dragged it sideways down
Massachusetts Avenue, the grinding and crunching of metal providing the perfect
accompaniment to the firework of sparks. Suddenly, the tandem wheels obtained a
grip on the Cadillac’s mangled hood, rode over its front end, and came down on
the other side with a loud crash. Still hanging onto the ladder, Drake was
thrown around like a piƱata, his knees and ankles banging against the metal
ladder. Bolts of pain shot through his legs.
The truck made a sharp turn to the left. For a moment, Drake
thought the vampire had lost control and that they were about to overturn. Out
of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a red, white, and blue
Interstate Highway shield with the number 395 emblazoned across it. They were
leaving the city and heading for the open road.
Things had just gone from worse to horrible.
ALISON GASPED AS the truck entered
into the sharp turn. Not only because it nearly tipped over, but because the
maneuver cut directly across the path of oncoming traffic. Half a dozen cars
hit their brakes to avoid an accident, with two of the cars being rear-ended by
the vehicles behind them. A Toyota Corolla speeding out of the street on the
right entered the intersection just as the truck did, and was barely able to
stop in time to avoid a collision. Unfortunately, the driver of the Metrobus
behind him, his attention momentarily distracted by a rowdy group of teenagers
in the rear, did not. The Metrobus slammed into the Toyota, shoving it directly
into the path of the truck. Because of the steep turn, the truck hit the Toyota
at an angle, shearing off the front end and spreading pieces of engine and
shards of chassis for nearly one hundred feet.
Alison lifted her foot off the accelerator, slowly wound her
way through the debris, then again applied gas once into the turn. By the time
the two vehicles reached Route 395, she was only one hundred feet behind the
truck. She watched as Drake regained his footing and pulled himself on top of
the tanker. With his knees bent and leaning forward to maintain balance, he
began to inch his way along the thin metal catwalk running the length of the
tanker.
Alison’s eyes grew wide. She slammed her hand against the
horn.
DRAKE HEARD THE signal from Alison.
Relieved to have her nearby, he turned and acknowledged her with a wave. From
inside the Ram, Alison frantically pointed in front of him.
Drake turned to see the cement beam of the E Street overpass
hurtling toward him. He fell forward onto the catwalk a split second before the
revetment whizzed by overhead, missing him by inches. He paused for a few
seconds, taking several deep breaths to regain his composure. Then, lifting
himself onto his hands and knees, he resumed crawling along the catwalk.
Drake didn’t see the approaching merge with the Southeast
Freeway, and wasn’t prepared when the truck swerved left onto the entry ramp.
The force of the turn knocked Drake off balance and he tumbled off the catwalk.
Instinctively, he reached out to grab something, and with his right hand
clutched the small safety rail that ran parallel to the catwalk. Dangling off
the side of the truck, he could see the cement jersey barriers racing by a few
feet beneath him. Drake lunged his left hand upward, trying to grab the safety
rail, but missed. He tried again without success. He could feel his fingers
going numb. Mustering all his strength, he made one final lunge for the safety
rail and grasped it.
That was as far as Drake got. The curved metal surface of
the tanker provided no traction for him to crawl back up.
ALISON QUICKLY TRIED to calculate
what the next move should be, but drew a blank. The Southeast Freeway had only
two lanes, which were even further restricted by a wall of jersey barriers
lining the shoulder of each lane. To move alongside the truck now would put her
in too great a danger of being sideswiped, knocking her out of the game just
when the boss needed her most. No. She would have to wait and make her move
after they reached a more open road.
The truck suddenly veered right, entering the off ramp for
the Kevin J. Welsh Memorial Bridge. Once across the bridge and outside of the
city, the truck increased speed to seventy miles per hour.
Alison noticed the flashing blue lights reflecting off the
interior of the Ram’s cab before she heard the sirens. Glancing into the
rearview mirror, she saw two D.C. police cars in pursuit and rapidly closing
the distance. As if she already did not have enough to worry about.
Pushing her foot all the way down on the accelerator, she
moved into position to help Drake.
THE VAMPIRE NOTICED the flashing
blues at the same time Alison did, and looked into the side mirror. Then he
noticed Drake hanging off the tanker. Their gazes met in the mirror’s
reflection. For a second, each opponent glared at one another. Then the
vampire’s eyes narrowed into blood red slits, and his lifeless lips sneered.
For Drake, things went from horrible to FUBAR.
The truck suddenly swung left and back again. Drake’s body
slammed against the tanker, the pain so intense he thought his abdomen might
explode. He tried lifting his right leg to the upper curve of the tanker, desperately
hoping to gain a foothold, but the truck again lurched to the left. And again
Drake slammed off the side of the tanker. He felt his grip weakening.
Both Drake and the vampire saw what was ahead of them at the
same time. Approximately five hundred feet ahead of them, a red Nissan pick-up
cruised along at fifty miles per hour, its flashers blinking. Two large red
flags had been placed on either side of the bed. A yellow banner draped over
the tailgate bore the words WIDE LOAD. Ahead of the Nissan, a tractor trailer
plodded down the center of the highway, a cut-away section of a single-story
house extending three feet over either side of the flatbed.
A single thought went through Drake’s mind. Shit!
The vampire steered to the right. The tanker converged on
the Nissan like a wolf on its prey. Fortunately, the Nissan’s driver saw the
approaching danger and moved into the breakdown lane where he came to a stop.
The tanker roared past the Nissan and began to overtake the flatbed on its
right side. When the two trucks were side by side, the vampire steered back to
the left. The driver of the flatbed attempted to move out of the way, but the
vampire continued to follow.
Drake anticipated the move. When the gap between the two
trucks closed, he turned to one side and pulled his legs up against his chest,
straining every muscle to sustain this semi-fetal position. The trucks collided
where Drake’s legs had been a moment earlier. The house section snapped and
splintered as the tanker tore along its length, showering Drake in shards and
chunks of broken wood. After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, the
tanker passed by the flatbed and continued down the freeway.
But the damage had been done. The collision had shifted the
house section so that more than six feet extended over the flatbed’s left rim.
When the driver tried to pull into the left breakdown lane, the rear quarter of
the house section slid onto the road and dragged along the pavement, pulling it
almost completely off the flatbed. The driver stopped with a deafening huff
from the airbrakes, the truck blocking the right lanes and the house section
blocking the left.
ALISON HAD A split second to make
her decision. Shifting into low gear, she aimed for the spot just behind the
flatbed where the damaged house section still clung to it. Closing her eyes and
lowering her head behind the steering wheel, she braced for the collision. A
heavy jolt rocked the Ram, accompanied by the sounds of splintering wood,
scraping metal, and fracturing glass. When she looked up, a huge spider
web-like crack covered the left portion of the windshield. But she had made it
through. Even better, a large debris field covered most of the left two lanes
of the highway. While one police car stopped to attend to the accident site,
the other slowed to a near crawl as it negotiated the scene.
If she wanted to save the boss, it was now or never while
she still had an open road and no police interference.
She saw the tanker a good half mile in the lead and pulling
away rapidly. Alison accelerated again, trying to ignore the whistling wind and
shards of loose glass coming from the damaged windshield. She reached over and
grabbed the shotgun.
NO ONE WAS more surprised than Drake
that he still clung to the side of the tanker. The vampire had stopped trying
to knock him off. Not that it mattered. He could feel his arms and hands going
numb, and knew he would not be able to hold on much longer.
Out of the corner of his eye, Drake saw Alison begin to pass
the tanker on the left as they entered the off ramp for the Inner Loop of the
Beltway. She raced along the off ramp’s shoulder, staying just far enough to
the rear so that she would not be spotted by the vampire while they made the
turn. At the last second, she gunned it so that the Ram pulled even with the
cab as they merged onto the Beltway. Racing from the off ramp at over sixty
miles per hour, both vehicles cut off several cars and trucks. Tires screeched
and horns blared as traffic swerved to avoid an accident, forcing all four
lanes of the Beltway to a stop. Good, thought Drake, now we don’t have to worry about innocent bystanders.
They were only half a mile from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
Alison let go of the steering wheel just long enough to
blare the horn. The vampire turned to look and stared into the twin barrels of
the shotgun.
Alison pulled the trigger.
The thunderous roar and flash from the gunpowder momentarily
blinded her. When the smoke cleared, she saw the remains of the vampire’s head
staring back at her. The face and top of its skull had been blown away, leaving
large flaps of dead flesh that folded backwards like the petals of a gory
flower. Its lower jaw remained intact as well as a fragment of the upper left
jaw that hung loosely, still attached to a strand of flesh. Whiffs of white
smoke drifted upwards from the mass of gore as the holy water reacted with pure
evil. The vampire tried to hiss, both out of pain and hatred, but could only
manage a bloody gurgle. Instead, it turned back to the road and futilely tried
to steer.
Alison dropped her speed just enough to fall back parallel
with the tanker, then slid as close as possible to the vehicle, placing the bed
directly under the dangling Drake. The truck started swaying, grinding the
tanker against the Ram and threatening to push it away. Alison steered into the
tanker and blared the horn.
Drake let go. He dropped into the Ram’s bed with a heavy
thud that knocked the wind out of him. Looking up, he saw the tandem wheels of
the tanker only a few feet away, threatening to crush the Ram’s bed and him
with it. Alison pulled into the center of the Beltway and slowed. When the Ram
came to a stop, Drake stood up, ignoring the throbbing in his legs and knees
and back, anxious to see what happened next. Alison stepped out of the cab and
stood by the open door.
Entering the approaches to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the
vampire attempted to keep the tanker straight, but had no way of knowing that
the far right lane was closed for construction. The truck hit the jersey
barriers blocking the lane and careened to the left at a forty-five degree
angle. Not knowing what it had hit, the creature instinctively turned the
steering wheel back to the right, sideswiping the barrier a second time. The
cab spun one hundred and eighty degrees. The tanker, however, continued
traveling straight. Ripping itself free from the trailer connection, the tanker
bounced over the cab’s rear chassis and up onto the Jersey barrier. The
grinding of metal against cement accompanied a panorama of sparks, but only for
a few seconds. The hull of the tanker ruptured under the pressure, spewing
forth a stream of gasoline that was immediately ignited by the sparks. Drake
watched the tanker erupt into a mushroom cloud of orange-red flames and oily
smoke.
A few seconds later, a headless figure staggered through the
inferno rapidly spreading across the bridge. Engulfed by flames so intense that
even cement decomposed and metal melted, the thing should already be destroyed.
Yet it fought to survive. With each step, strips of dead flesh seared off and
blew away, revealing muscles and organs that shriveled in the heat. Finally
yielding to the inevitable, the vampire stopped. It let out a guttural howl
from its shattered, burnt throat that sounded as if it had come straight from
the depths of hell. The howling stopped only when the body crumbled into dust,
which was instantly blown apart by the intense winds caused by the
conflagration.
Only then did Drake become aware of the flashing red and
blue lights reflecting off the metallic surface of the Ram. Alison stood facing
to the rear, her hands clasped behind her head. A sharp, angry voice focused
Drake’s concentration.
“You on the pick-up. I said place your hands behind your
head and turn around. Now!”
In one slow motion, Drake turned around and raised his hands
behind his head until his fingers interlocked. One of the police cars that had
been chasing them sat twenty feet away. Two police officers stood by the front
of the car, their pistols trained on Drake and Alison.
The older of the two cops, a muscular Hispanic with
Rodriguez displayed on his nameplate, used the same angry voice on Drake again.
“Get off the pick-up, slowly, and move beside your girlfriend.”
Drake complied. The two cops cautiously moved closer. Then
the Hispanic sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, Christ. I should have known.”
“What do you mean?” asked his partner.
“You’re in the presence of a celebrity,” Rodriguez said
sarcastically. “You’re about to arrest Drake Matthews.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. You’ll get sick of him soon enough.” Holstering
his pistol, Rodriguez removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt and motioned
for Drake to turn around. “I assume you won’t give me any trouble?”
Drake turned lowered his hands behind his back. “Do I ever?”
The Vampire Hunters is available as a trade paperback from Amazon or as part of the omnibus for the Kindle or Nook. Be sure to check out the sequels: Vampyrnomicon and Dominion.
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