Darkness Dominates - Chapter 24

Gilton Park was a suburb of Romerstin overtaken by failing businesses, illegal trade and public disorder. Its decline came in the wake of the recent recession. The worst two areas were Anderson Road and Paddock Street.

This was where Katy had been for the past week and a half. At her feet was another homeless person she had drained blood from. Her instincts were telling her to seek prey no-one was looking for. Between her arrival and now, Katy had gone through three people sleeping rough per night. She had the hunger of two vampires – a single source of blood wasn’t sufficient to cater to her appetite. Leaving the dead man with no roof over his head, she left the alleyway where she’d killed him. Katy hadn’t used her hyper-speed since coming here. Walking was helping her think about what her next move would be. Her feet took her to Paddock Street. The entrance to that area was a long road, overlooked by numerous railway bridges. Just past the seventh one she came to was ‘The Red Hen’ pub.

Despite its grubby-looking exterior, Katy saw many silhouettes against the light coming through the windows. Music from inside was slipping through an open crack in the middle one.

She moved her head a little to that tune, but it didn’t turn out to be something she’d listen to, again and again. Nevertheless, it did somehow entice her inside. Katy still had her school uniform on, but nobody inside seemed to notice, or care, about that. None of the customers were over the age of 40. They mostly looked like members of urban gangs or street corner drug dealers. There was only one member of staff on duty – a barmaid. She was dressed more like a pole dancer. Her fashion sense had rubbed off on two young women who started pushing each other. They progressed to slapping each other around the face. Katy found somewhere that gave her some solitude, but the brawlers took their fight over where she’d just sat down. The head of one of them was thrust onto the table, knocking two beer mats off it. An empty pint glass was subsequently used as a projectile against the other combatant’s head, but it missed. They both leaned onto the centre of the table, toppling it to one side. Rolling to the floor, they got up and fought each other again, getting ever nearer to Katy. Every time she tried moving out of range, the fight kept honing in on her presence. The door to the pub was opened and in walked nine young adults – four men nearing the end of their teenage years and five females a couple of years away from that age. All had dark leather jackets. On the back was the collective name for these individuals – The Black Angels. The females had dark leather dog collars with metal studs around their necks, but not the young men. Katy ascertained the one stood in front was the leader. His brown hair had been slicked back by a comb and some water. He suddenly grabbed the girls who were brawling and unceremoniously threw them out of the pub. The rest of his posse stood aside to let him through, closing ranks again when he was back standing ahead of them. Their arrival had got everyone’s attention and not in a good way. All the pub’s customers knew The Black Angels and had nothing good to say about them. Their leader began eyeing them all. A thirty-something married couple looked back at him and the rest of the group with fear and loathing.

This wasn’t what Katy felt as she stared at him. Though it was only 11 days since she’d been turned, she sensed what he was – what they all were. She got up from where she was crouched and walked towards them. Katy stood directly in front of him.

“Are you out of your bloody mind, love?” the wife yelled at her. “This lot are bad news! They’ll send you to A&E!”

The outburst from this woman didn’t scare Katy off from moving out of the way. The others behind The Black Angels’ leader were about to get her out of their path. Katy showed her teeth as she smiled. There was still blood on the lower gums. He put his arms out in either direction to block his posse from moving further forwards.

“How long since you were turned?” he asked Katy.

“Over a week ago”

“What’s your name?”

“Katy Lonsdale”

“Yeah, I know you! Your parents were killed by a vampire!”

“It was totally my doing!”

“Cool”

“I so didn’t think so when it happened”

“And now”

“I suck blood from the homeless so I don’t feel bad”

“Smart”

“Who turned you?” asked one of the women in this gang of immortals.

“Two sisters”

“Do they talk like the characters on ‘Downton Abbey’?” asked the man Katy was directly facing.

“Kind of”

“Yeah, I know them” he said. “Emily and Lynette Eddington”

“Why did they turn me?”

“Knowing them, to continue their bloodline – they’re way psycho, which makes for great sex, by the way!”

“So didn’t need to know that!” said Katy, rolling her eyes at him. “What’s your name?”

“Jeremy, but the other Black Angels call me Jez; its’ more 21^st century! Listen, we’re about to partake in an all-you-can-eat buffet! Do you want to join us?”

Katy surveyed the whole interior of The Red Hen, and then answered “Totally”.

One after the other, she, Jez and the rest of The Black Angels, exhibited the only weapons they needed to kill – the teeth that sat either side of the middle two. They all turned towards those who were sitting at the pub’s tables. Out from the same crack in the window Katie heard music billowing through, came yelling and screaming. A lager drinker tried to escape via the main doors, but was pulled inside again, never to emerge alive again.

Straight ahead of the pub’s front entrance were the two young women Jez had ejected from the building’s interior. The pair of them lay side-by-side, lifeless, and with blood streaming the left-hand side of their necks. The mutilations were more visible than conventional vampire bites. It advertised the fact The Black Angels didn’t care how much damage they inflicted on human flesh. The dead young lady on the right was beside a puddle on the pavement, reflecting a full moon in the night sky. Blood from her wound had trickled into the water, adding a red filter to the reflection.

The following morning’s sunrise brought a pink and purple hue to the sky. It gave the fields of Varney Meadows an unusual colour. Farmer Jack Beavis was watching this spectacle from the kitchen window.

He put on his coat and went outside. His first destination of the day was a tall hut. Farmer Beavis opened it up. It allowed the sunlight to illuminate what was inside – a sack of hen food. A rat was scurrying around one of the hut’s corners. He didn’t have any animal-based phobias, so its presence didn’t scare him. Jack picked it up and placed it outside the six foot-high wooden structure. He removed the sack and took it straight over to the coup, a few feet away.

As soon as he got there, Farmer Beavis witnessed the first bit of evidence that something was seriously wrong. The hens inhabiting it were running around, highly agitated. A few were flapping their wings vigorously, even though they were flightless. He hadn’t seen them like this, since the problem he’d had with foxes. Farmer Beavis leaned the sack up against the right corner at the front side of the coup. He rushed in and out of the farmhouse to get his gun. When he got to the area where the livestock were kept, he heard the cows and pigs exhibiting fear in the way both species did.

The only noise he didn’t hear was the kind the sheep make when they faced danger. He called out to his sheepdog.

“Wilson! Wilson!”

The hound didn’t come running towards him.

Jack clutched his double-barrelled weapon even tighter. He raced over to the warehouse-sized building where all the sheep and lambs were meant to be, during the night. He stared hard at the barn doors in horror. The lower half of them had been severely mauled, leaving a large enough gap from the ground up for someone to roll under.

“Foxes didn’t do this!” he said aloud. “The damage done here is beyond what they can do with their teeth.”

Farmer Beavis was preparing himself for the worst. He was right to.

Entering through that gap, he saw carnage the like of which he hadn’t seen before. The area of the floor in front of him was littered with internal organs, limbs and brains. The metal gates around the pens hadn’t kept out whatever had done this. He walked from one end of the barn to the other. The scene was the same everywhere – sheep, ewes and lambs ripped apart and strewn all over. Thinking he saw something move, he aimed his gun and fired. A distressed-sounding baa was heard. Jack headed over to where the noise had come from as fast as he could. It was the sole survivor of this massacre, but not for long. The male sheep was laid on its left-hand side, fading fast.

“Burt!”

There was nothing he could do for him. The gunshot wounds were fatal. Burt died within a minute of receiving his injuries.

He then saw a trail of blood leading out of where the sheep and lambs were kept. Jack followed it. The scarlet line stretched towards one of the farmlands’ cornfields. Just by the gate that opened into it, he saw Wilson. Like Burt he was lying on one side on the ground, but perfectly still. Farmer Beavis looked to the left and saw Wilson’s entrails adjacent to the tip of his nose. This was too much, even for his stomach and he puked up what he’d eaten last night. After he’d recovered, his wife and youngest daughter’s screams filled the air. They’d heard his gun go off and come out to investigate, only to be met with this gruesome sight. He went over to them and calmed them down as best he could.

“Go inside the house, Beth, and phone the police” he said to his fourth daughter.

She didn’t hesitate in doing what she was told. He instructed his wife to get him some more ammo.

Three fields away, a trail of abnormally-large canine prints stretched out for a good twelve feet. Where it ended was Natalie Stewart. She was lying naked at the foot of the maize that was being grown here. Her body was covered in tufts of wool and flecks of animal skin. Smeared around her face was the blood of one of the ewes that had been slaughtered.

Consciousness revisited her as she heard her mum’s voice calling her. She gradually raised herself up to a standing position. Natalie looked around, and then spat out tiny splinters of wood that were on her tongue. The crops were too tall to see heads or shoulders of her parents or brother. Olivia thrust up her right arm. The fingers of the hand attached to it could just be seen by her daughter. Natalie surged through the crops around her to see the rest of her mum’s body. Olivia had her birthday suit on as well.

“Are you okay, Natalie?”

She didn’t answer until she’d pulled off some of the wool off her hips and vagina.

“I totally won’t need breakfast, mum.”

Olivia expelled match-sized wooden fragments from her mouth too. She looked at them on her hands, coated in saliva.

“You too, I see, mum. Gross, huh?”

“We’d better find your twin and your dad” instructed Olivia.

Natalie and her mum located them at the far edge of this crop field. Their nude bodies had the most blood and flesh all over them.

“Where’s the car?”

“Just twenty-odd yards in that direction, Nat” said Mr Stewart, pointing left.

“We’d better get their fast” Olivia said to her husband and kids. “I can smell the local farmer coming this way.”

It took the Stewarts over 15 minutes to reach the vehicle. Alvin opened the boot and started removing the clothes stored there. All four family members were dressed within 10 minutes. Keith had got his T-shirt on inside out and had to put it on again. This slowed their departure time by at least a minute or two. His sister and dad groaned at this minor delay.

“Every time this happens, we have to get out of wherever we end up, fast!” Alvin reminded his son.

“Sorry, dad” said Keith, as he got into the back of the car.

The three other family members randomly entered the three remaining spaces in the vehicle. There was no time to decide who was sitting where. On this occasion, Olivia ended up in the driver’s seat.

“Remember, when we get home, we get ourselves showered and changed. As for as the outside world’s concerned, we were never here”, Olivia said to her husband and offspring, before starting up the engine.

They all nodded. This rule was one that had to be repeated during every aftermath of their lunar-driven change. Listening to it wasn’t optional for any of them.

The car driving off coincided with Farmer Beavis finally entering this field, shotgun still in his hands. He clocked each paw print in the soil as he moved his weapon in every direction. Jack kept it steady as he prepared to take aim again. He was ready to be a bit more cautious, though. Farmer Beavis wanted to be sure he had the right target. Whilst he was exercising this level of restraint, he saw a second set of paw prints.

“It figures” he said to himself, as he realised more than one hound had decimated the sheep and lamp population on his farm. Jack’s thoughts were now edging towards the possibility of wolves being responsible. His voice of reason kept telling him that couldn’t be true. The animals dogs originated from weren’t indigenous to Alvenshire’s countryside. This he’d learned from books about the local wildlife, but he wasn’t sure whether he believed that now. The prints in the ground were bigger than ones left by even the largest breed of domesticated dog.

His puzzlement increased when he saw that there weren’t any after a certain point in the soil. Jack searched over ten yards in all directions, but he didn’t find a single one. It was as if the animals that caused the carnage on his farm had vanished into thin air. He was left with a mystery, and no details to give to the police, when they would ask him to recount this sequence of events.