Tale of the Dead Town (15 page)

How have you been?
a cheerful voice said in her head. Today it sounded terribly bold.

You can understand me, right? You understand what I’m saying
, Lori thought back.
Please, you’ve got to help me!

Just leave it to me
, the voice agreed readily.

The nurse pulled herself up. She burned with a demonic urge to fight this new foe.
As she held her hands out in front of her chest, the fingers were spread for clawing.
Like an animal the nurse pounced, but the black shadow went right through her. A black
semicircle jutted from the white chest of her uniform. The nurse collapsed in a heap.

In no time, the semicircle had vanished. Lori couldn’t begin to imagine what kind
of physical properties the weapon must’ve possessed.

How about that? That’s what happens when a monster or two crosses my path. You wanna
learn how to do this stuff, too?

I do
, Lori thought, wishing it with all her heart. Telepathy—a way to speak without using
words. A flying disk that could kill a servant of the bloodsucking Nobility with one
blow. Lori had to have these things.

Then we should be able to do something here. I need to ask one favor of you, if that’s
okay.

Just name it. I’ll do whatever you want.

Lori’s feverish, trembling thoughts were overlaid with a man’s cold laughter.
Well, it’s like this
. . .

-

Aspecial kind of death was racing around town. Just now, it’d paid a visit to one
house, and, after meeting it for just a few seconds’ time, all five members of the
family thudded to the floor. It couldn’t drink their blood, and this displeased it.
But it was fated not to drink the blood of its peers. You might say it was performing
the same role as a kind of infectious germ.

Emanating from every inch of it were what could be called vampire bacteria. The bacteria
entered into the unlucky people through their skin and then moved into their muscle
cells, going all the way to the marrow of their bones. And then something else was
born. Night’s baleful energy sprang from the marrow of their bones, and their muscles
grew ten times stronger. No matter how much damage the skin cells might take, they’d
regenerate in a few seconds. Surpassing humanity in every respect, and terrifying
them in every respect as well. All because of their lust for blood . . .

Less than five minutes after their visitor had left, the family members awoke. They
felt the hunger. And there was another powerful urge as well. They had to make more
of their kind. They’d been made to avoid competing with each other.

More of our kind—

Make more of our kind—

And then the family left their home behind, each member off to separately fulfill
their common duty.

-

When D came to the hospital looking for Lori, he heard from a deathly pale Dr. Tsurugi
how the girl had been attacked by the vampire nurse. The Hunter seemed to have only
the slightest interest in the incident. “Was she okay?” he asked.

“More or less,” Dr. Tsurugi replied.

And that was the end of it.

Gripping a memo pad and electromagnetic pen in her delicate hands, Lori wrote,
What can I do for you?

D’s well-formed lips began to move. “I want you to go to your old house.”

Why?

“Your parents hid certain chemical and mathematical formulas somewhere in the house
before they ran off. If we don’t dispose of them once and for all, there’s likely
to be more trouble, and you’ve seen the abominable results of such experiments with
your own eyes.”

But I don’t know anything!

“Was there any place in particular in the house where your parents often brought you?”

Yes, there was.

“That’s what I need to know, and that’s why you have to go with me.”

Okay
. Putting the pen down, Lori got up.

-

A
bout the town—where do you think it’s headed?
Lori asked D as they walked along. Her lips merely shaped the words. She got no answer.
Perhaps that was because it didn’t matter.

Suddenly, D said, “Apparently a new destination’s been programmed into the computers.
That’s where we’re headed.”

But where is that?

“Given our present course, a place where there’s ruins and graves that belonged to
the Nobility.”

Why would we go to such a place?

“We’d have to ask whoever input the heading. Though I have a feeling I might know.”

What do you mean by that?

This time D didn’t answer her. The two of them entered the old Knight house.

“Now, then, if you could show me the place you mentioned,” D said softly.

Lori nodded.

Not surprisingly, the first place they went was the laboratory, someplace that’d been
searched thoroughly by both D and the black shadow.

My father was always tapping the top of that desk with his finger. He may have been
hiding something.

D reached for the pressure-resistant desk crafted of mahogany. “Where did he hit it?”

Lori pointed at a certain section. Though the surface of the desk seemed perfectly
normal, on closer inspection it appeared that just that one spot was a bit more faded
than the rest.

D stroked the surface. “How about it?” he asked.

Although Lori couldn’t hear what he’d said, her eyes were riveted to him. There was
definitely something rising grotesquely from the palm of his left hand. It resembled
a human face. Lori watched silently as its lips moved.

“Hmm. The surface has been finished with something to bring out the shine. But it’s
oddly light in the part she just pointed out. The problem doesn’t seem to be the thickness
of the coat, but rather the composition.”

“Is the composition the same?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Stand back, please.”

Lori backed away, just as she was told. After all, there was something she
had to do
to the young man.

D’s longsword flashed out. The swipe of his steel was faster than any eye could follow.
Cleanly sliced from the desk, the piece of wood in question landed in D’s left hand.
“Analyze it,” D commanded.

“Damn, you’re a regular slave driver,” the mouth in his hand remarked with discontent.

D pressed the thin board into the palm of his hand. A second passed, then two, then
three.

“Good enough,” a cramped voice said, trickling out between the hand and the board.

D opened his hand. The face on his palm had been reduced to just a pair of lips. A
red tongue hung from them. Apparently his left hand had analyzed the material by licking
it, as evidenced by the fact the surface of the board was wet.

“The atomic arrangement of each element forms a single letter or digit in the formula.
That’s a real good hiding place. If any given element is too thick or too thin, the
letter disappears.”

“Yes, it certainly is clever. So—” D began to say, but, as he looked over his shoulder,
a pale little hand slammed a wooden wedge into his chest. Staggering back, D thudded
to the floor. Surely he never dreamed Lori would reach around from behind him to put
a stake in him.

But, in fact, Lori hadn’t driven a stake into him at all.

With the realization that D’s body wasn’t moving in the slightest, the girl’s sweet
countenance suddenly crumbled, and an indescribably crude smile surfaced in its place.
The voice that came from her was that of a man. “Now that’s the way you do it! That’s
one obstacle out of the way, I guess. I bet it never occurred to him I might slip
into the little lady he trusted the most. No hard feelings, bucko. Everything in life
just boils down to business.”

When the girl smiled broadly once again, her expression was unmistakably that of John
M. Brasselli Pluto VIII.

-

The town kept moving. D still lay on the floor with a stake through his heart. The
mayor had come and was engaged in an uncharacteristically enthusiastic conversation
with Lori, and somewhere in town Pluto VIII’s body wasn’t breathing at all, while
his heart alone kept beating. Dr. Tsurugi knew none of this, but mantled as he was
in a vague fear, he could do nothing but arm himself with a scalpel and a shotgun.

-

Those scattering the vampire plague were paying quiet calls on the houses in town,
while those who had fallen waited impatiently for the sun to go down. And those intently
watching the three-dimensional radar in the navigational control room discovered a
vast expanse of ruins on the plateau some twenty miles ahead of them—and they were
terribly shocked to find there was less than an eight-inch difference between the
height of the plateau and their present altitude.

-

Okay, time to come up with a final price. How much are you offering, fancy pants?”
Lori asked, her lovely lips twisting into a sneer. Needless to say, the falsetto voice
belonged to Pluto VIII. “I’ve got the chemical formula and mathematical equations
you need to become a Noble. You’ve gotta be willing to pay handsomely for that.”

“Fine. Fifty million dalas.”

“Don’t make me laugh. We’re not talking about a kid looking for his allowance here.
With this, you’ll be able to make people who can go about their lives just as they
do now and only have to drink blood once or twice a month—you follow me? Naturally,
they’d be able to walk in the light of day. They could fall into water without drowning.
And they wouldn’t need to eat. You could blast ’em with a rifle or laser or whatever
and the damage still wouldn’t kill ’em. Plus, their personality won’t change at all.
There’s nothing but advantages to this, right? You don’t go offering a lousy fifty
million dalas for something like that.”

“Make it five hundred million dalas, then,” the mayor said, smiling broadly.

The offer had just grown tenfold, but Pluto VIII shook Lori’s head from side to side.
“Five hundred billion dalas—and not a bit less. After all, you’re getting the secret
to making supermen. And, as an added bonus, I already borrowed this little lady’s
body and got rid of the Vampire Hunter who was holding up the works. So you won’t
be getting any further discount from me. Hell, you want me to go tell everyone how
you cut my throat wide open while I was in your maid’s body? I hate to break it to
you, but I can get into rotting corpses, too. I could work her vocal cords and have
her testify if I had to.”

After thinking a bit, the mayor nodded and said, “Okay. It’s all for the good of my
town. You’ll get the price you named—five hundred billion dalas. But I’ll need one
thing to sweeten the deal.”

“And what would that be?”

“In place of the Vampire Hunter you killed, I’ll need you to take care of the last
vampire plaguing us—he’s one of my experiments gone wrong.”

Pluto VIII said nothing.

“The man I let on board two hundred years ago gave me a certain chemical formula and
a procedure for making humans into vampires. However, it proved too difficult for
me to complete successfully. I had to wait two long centuries for a pair of geniuses
like Mr. and Mrs. Knight to be born before my hopes could be realized. But then they
ran out on me at the last minute. Didn’t care for my orders that the fruits of their
labor only be used on the residents of our town. They wanted to use it for the good
of the whole world. The fools,” Mayor Ming spat. “There’s only a small handful of
people who actually want to live in peace. Just try giving something like that to
the world below. Before you knew it, they’d start murdering each other. Those who
were going to live in peace would only wind up courting death. I conducted my own
research without their assistance. Though two of my guinea pigs came extremely close
to success, it was simply beyond my power to root out the vampire cruelty budding
within them. And, unfortunately, both of them escaped. One of them targeted my daughter
to exact his revenge, but he was destroyed by the Vampire Hunter. The other one is
still active—spreading the vampire bacteria within him everywhere he goes.”

“That’s rich,” Lori—or rather, Pluto VIII—said, clutching
her
belly as he laughed. “Sounds to me like the situation is proceeding just like you
hoped it would. Care to tell me why you want the vamp killed?”

“The cruelty of the Nobility is so great, it drives even
them
mad. I’m sure you’re aware not only of what their kind did to us, but also how vicious
the disputes were that raged between fellow Nobles. I want the life of the Nobility.
However, at the same time, that life must be one of eternal peace.”

“You’re a greedy cuss, I’ll grant you.”

“Say what you will. It would be difficult for me to say the present strain of Nobilitation
would suffice, no matter what we might try. You’ll have to hurry and dispose of him
before he turns every last person in town into an imitation vampire. And if you don’t
like that, then the whole deal is off.”

“Okay,” Lori/Pluto VIII said, nodding. “I’ll drop your freak with one shot. Consider
it as good as done.”

The intercom buzzed loudly.

“What is it now?” the mayor fairly barked.

“The town is approaching a plateau. Preparations for landing have already begun.”

“Aha,” Pluto VIII said, eyes gleaming. “Then I guess this must be the destination
that got fed into your computers. It should be kinda fun to try and figure out why
he’d do that.”

“If he input these coordinates, it’s pretty obvious that once we get there he’ll gain
some advantage. Hurry up and get rid of him.”

“Understood.” Nodding his agreement, Pluto VIII got up. “You said there’s already
been some victims, right? That’s just too damn funny. Let’s hope some of them at least
wanted
to be vampires . . . ”

-

Leaving the mayor’s home, Pluto VIII felt an unspeakably weird aura envelope his borrowed
body. Twilight was approaching. The aura wasn’t particularly concerned with him individually—it
filled the very air. A vast number of sources for the unsettling emanations were moving
about nearby.