Blood Red

It ended sooner than he expected. The vampires came down hard on the police captain. He never even had a chance to draw his weapon.

III

The Black Stone Bay High School Tigers were stuck playing a game in Newport. After that, the plan was to get together and party for a few hours. They had won the game and were ready for a little celebration.

The deep fog that had settled over the area made getting where they wanted to go a lot slower than they would have liked, but there were a few pleasant distractions and everyone was feeling pretty good about the victory. They only grumbled when the bus came to a stop nearly a mile from the school.

“Come on, Jonesy!” Mitch Larson was fed up with the delays. He had a promise from Leanne that he was going to get some action if he scored more than half the points in the game and he’d done it, “What’s the holdup?”

Oscar Jones, the bus driver, was a mellow old man who never complained about how the kids called him Jonesy, They loved him for that; but sometimes he was a little slow on the driving speeds.

Jonesy looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “We got four cars here that ain’t moving, Mitch. They’re blocking both sides of the road.”

Mitch stood up and shook his head. “They’re gonna move; believe it.” Leanne chuckled at his attitude. He’d make her pay later.

Mitch and two of the others got out of the bus and headed for the cars. All of them were empty, but it looked like whoever had been in them had left in a hurry.

Mitch was just climbing into the first of them when the frat boys from the college came for the fresh meat. A few of the guys coming their way had badly burned flesh. One of them was missing most of his arm. If it was makeup, it was fucking realistic. He couldn’t see where there were any smears of stage paint, and the sagging of their faces didn’t seem like it could have been done without heavy latex applications.

It wasn’t makeup.

The varsity football team put up a good fight. They didn’t last very long, but they tried.

Go Tigers!

IV

Sol Marcone was not a very good sailor, but he loved to fish. He was anchored out in the middle of the bay and decided he was just fine staying there until the damned fog lifted. He had cereal, milk, and enough coffee and beer to keep him going for several hours.

He liked fishing on Halloween. It kept the kids from being annoying. They could knock to their heart’s content and never ever manage to disturb him.

He had a reputation for not liking children very much and it was well earned. He’d never actually drop-kicked one of the little shits, but he thought about it all the time. Kids were noisy, smelly, and only slightly less offensive than their parents these days. Used to be that parents knew how to use a belt for discipline; these days they tried to reason with their pups, which was just stupid.

He really didn’t expect to have a young teenager come swimming across the bay toward him. The girl couldn’t have been more than twelve or so, a pretty little thing who was stuck in the bay.

Sol frowned and wondered if some idiot had wrecked their boat against the rocks. It would be easy to do in this fog.

“Hey! You okay, kid?”

She swam closer and he put down his fishing pole. He didn’t like kids, but he wasn’t an asshole about it. She obviously needed help and he wasn’t about to let her drown.

He reached out a hand and she took it. When he pulled, she came out of the water, her clothes stuck to her developing body like a second skin. He was embarrassed to notice that she had breasts.

While he was looking, she bit into his weathered neck and pulled him closer. He tried to fight, but she was too strong for him. Their struggles wound up knocking them both into the water.

She took her food with her and went back to the cave. It was scary in the waters and she had always been a poor swimmer, but it was easier now that she didn’t have to breathe.

V

The fire at O’Malley’s brought three engines worth of firefighters. They worked hard to put out the blaze and in the end they succeeded. The Tripp family thanked them for their efforts by killing them. The hunger had grown overwhelming and they needed sustenance.

Alan Tripp was the one that suggested taking them back to the cave. Meghan agreed and Avery too, just as soon as Alan told him he could drive one of the fire trucks.

The resulting accident left several cars mutilated beyond repair and caused another fire. No engines responded to the frantic phone calls.

VI

Maggie and Ben got back to the apartment complex as quickly as they could. Ben had held up pretty well, all things considered, but he was having a little trouble handling the frat boys from hell.

“I can’t believe this shit. I knew those guys.” He was a little obsessive about it. He didn’t say much, but he said it several times. Jason had told her they were taken care of, and she thought that meant he’d destroyed the bodies.

Her mistake; she’d trusted him. It would not happen again.