Blood Red

The door to O’Malley’s slammed open before she could say so.

Ben turned his head sharply and Maggie looked over his shoulder as ten figures in black costumes entered the place. A few people were making appreciative comments about their makeup. Maggie was not among them. While she had never seen a vampire—as opposed to an Undead, according to Jason—she knew immediately what they were. How could she not? They were all boys from the frat house.

And they had all looked better. To the very last, they had wounds that she had inflicted on them. Fatal wounds in some cases, disfiguring in others. According to Jason, they would heal given enough time.

Todd, a big jock she’d taken downstairs, reached out and grabbed a man in a Dracula outfit by his arm and hauled him closer, his mouth opening wide to bite down on the screaming icon’s neck. Several of the patrons standing nearest the incident tried to scramble away from the carnage with only moderate success.

The rest of the vampires moved into the room, grabbing indiscriminately. Maggie stepped back, drawing Ben with her.

Ben looked on, almost mesmerized. “Maggie, what the hell?”

“We have to leave, Ben. Right now. I think Jason let his vampires out of their cages.”

People were reaching full panic now, and pushing toward the far side of the bar out of desperation. One of them almost knocked Ben down and she shoved the man without thinking, as shocked as anyone else when he went airborne and slammed into three others trying to escape. Ben watched with wide eyes.

“Run, Ben!” She pushed a few more out of the way as the vampires came further into the bar, grabbing and biting like rabid dogs. One of them reached for her and she turned to stare it in the eyes. It was the birthday boy from the frat house. He didn’t recognize her, he was just hungry.

She stared into his eyes and he looked at her with absolute terror, backing away and hissing mindlessly. That was unexpected, but a good thing just the same.

Somebody got fed up with watching people get chewed on and broke a pool cue over the head of one of the frat boys. The good thing about mob rules was that a lot of people tended to follow the leader. That was also the bad thing.

Several of the people in the room tried to fight back. All they got for their troubles was a little more pain and a lot more bloodshed. The man with the pool cue struck Doug Clark across the back of his head. Clark turned on him fast and hit him so hard that his head exploded. The vampire’s fist went clean through the skull and into the wall behind him. Another man tried the pool-cue trick and wound up with both of his arms broken before he was killed.

A third got a little craftier and threw vodka on the dead thing coming his way. The vampire didn’t take the crowd into consideration, or the decorative candles that were still burning on several tables. He stumbled back into a person who shoved him sideways into a table, where he promptly caught fire.

Maggie lifted Ben completely off the ground and pushed. Ben worked better as a battering ram than she would have expected. People were knocked left and right and down to the ground as she pushed through the people in her way.

Somebody broke under her foot. She didn’t have time to think about it. The fire ran across the spilled vodka and caused even more panic. She hit the back door and the fire alarm went off. Maggie ran while Ben made an interesting array of sounds.

Right after they exited, one of the vampires grabbed and pulled the door shut. They didn’t wait around to see if anyone else got out alive.

II

The night had gone completely insane.

Boyd and Holdstedter walked through the fog at a fast jog, listening for the sounds of people dying. Most of what was going on seemed to be silence.

“You see where we are?”

“Yeah, the Cliff Walk.” Danny wasn’t throwing banter. He was all business. That was maybe the worst part.

“I’m seeing blood and I’m seeing candy bags. What I am not seeing is bodies.”

“This is fucked up, Richie.”

He scanned the area carefully. Not a single body to be found and not a person on the street, but there was enough scattered candy to keep a small army of kids hyperactive for a month.

“You ever see kids leave their candy behind?”

“Not without a good fuckin’ reason.”

They heard the footsteps coming down the street. They couldn’t help but hear them; the only other sound was the distant sigh of the waves.

The steps started slowly and then increased. Not one person, but several. Grown men in black costumes were coming at them. Maybe a few women, too, it was hard to tell.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right? Do these assholes actually have blood on their faces?”

“Matter of fact, Danny Boy, they do.”

They spared one quick look at each other and then started shooting.