I crouch below the overpass, where Highway 10 intersects the 101 at the heart of downtown Los Angeles. It’s after midnight. There probably isn’t another human being outside within fifty miles. The moon is a beacon overhead, floating over wispy black clouds.
To pass the time, I think about Dallas, my dead mentor. Dallas once told me, when it comes to vampires, “Speed kills.”
They called Dallas ‘Nike’ because he could run so fast. He was fast with a sword, too. When a vampire would attack, Dallas would strike first and take of their head with his blade. Only a few other guys in the world were that fast. Dallas had forty-two kills before he met a sucker even faster than he was. The same one I’m hunting tonight.
The night is silent as death. The air is clean and crisp. There’s no reek of garbage like when the city was alive. I crouch in the rubble under the bridge and peer at my reflection in the silvery blade. The face peering back looks older than my twenty-seven years.
The one sure way to stop a charging vampire is to sever the head. It has something to do with how their bodies work. Guns don’t work. Even an Uzi .45 ACP won’t always do the job. The suckers attack so fast, you can’t plant enough lead in time to save your throat. I know, I’ve seen it happen.
Like Dallas, I use a sword. I hunt at night. People think I’m crazy. Let them.
My nostrils twitch. The truly ancient vampires each have their own distinct scent. The one that killed Dallas smelled of summer dandelions.
I lift my new blade. It’s much lighter than ones I’ve used before. In fact it might be the lightest blade of its size ever made.
After Dallas died, humans surrendered the night. If the suckers could take out Nike, folks figured there was no one left who could stand up to them. Besides me, the only hunters now are day jockeys, unskilled young turks with gas cans and blow torches. Sure they get a few kills – mostly newly-turned suckers they find sleeping under garbage or in abandoned buildings. But young vamps aren’t the problem. They can’t even make other vampires. It’s the ancient ones who are the breeders, and they burrow deep, hundreds of feet down. You never find the ancient ones in daylight. The day jockeys are just treating the symptom.
They aren’t attacking the root.
There’s broken concrete near my feet. Rusty re-bar protrudes from it. I run the blade across the re-bar, and the steel rod slices off and falls to the ground like a tender spring sapling. This new blade is my own design. It’s made from a composite of titanium and a radioactive isotope of zirconium. The cutting edge is less than three nanometers wide, but incredibly stable.
The dandelion smell is stronger now. He’s not even trying to conceal his approach. Why should he? He’s fought countless swordsmen before, drained them dry. He killed the famous Nike. I’m easy meat, he figures.
Though Nike was my mentor, I didn’t rush for vengeance in a blind fury. I let my hatred and anguish cool. I trained sixteen hours each day. I studied the sucker’s weaknesses. I studied chemistry and metallurgy and forged a sword unlike any other.
I take the syringe from my pocket and slide the needle into the purple vein inside my elbow. The PCP and adrenaline cocktail punches home like a hammer. I’m boiling with speed and power, ready to explode. The air turns sparkling clear. Time slows to a crawl. He appears at the other side of the tunnel; six and a half lean feet of fast-twitch sinew and bones like steel pipe.
I step out into the moonlight. Less than fifty feet separates us.
They have strength and speed, but we humans have ingenuity. We will prevail in the end. I grip the blade lightly and lift it above my shoulder at a slightly downward angle.
Time to take back the night.
I look at him and smile. “Bring it, old man.”
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©2010 Charles Mirho
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