Fiction - The Last Spike
The Last Spike
by Paul Silver, 5th March 1993
I feel weak. The battle sapped the last of my strength.
Bodies lie around me, none of them in natural positions, I feel sick, but I do not know whether it is for the dead, the many dead, or myself.
I wait and wonder if I am to change.
I can see a widening pool of blood, it sickens me, but it frightens me also. When the feeling leaves me I must finish the job I started an age ago. I think of this and settle the rough point of the spike against my chest, hoping I have the willpower to fall if I have to. Thinking.
The trouble started in January, I had braved the slippery streets and icy winds to meet a friend in the local pub, The King's Head. It was warm within and the air held the usual smell of cheap beer and sweat. Harry had said his need for a drink was high, and he had called me from the pub itself, I hoped he was still in a condition to talk.
Harry was seated at a table on his own, as I went to him I signalled the barman for two drinks, my friend looked as if he had all ready had two too many. The many empty glasses in front of him seemed to have had little effect, judging by the greyness of his face and the way his eyes stared out from under pinched brows.
"How are you, my friend?" I asked quietly as I sat down, the King's Head was a pleasant enough place, but I did not want all of the patrons to know the business of two policemen.
Two bloodshot eyes glanced up at me, then went back to the glass he was holding, there was still a small amount of beer in the bottom, the sort of film left when a glass has been emptied in one stroke, but not having been upturned, waiting for every last drop to leave. It was not the glass of an alcoholic, but coupled with the look of the holder, a frightened man.
Harry waited for the drinks to arrive before he spoke, his tone was flat, like that of a man in shock.
"I have seen something, Arthur, something terrible." He took a long pull from his beer, I left mine on the table, waiting for him to speak again. "It was a murder, the victim was a young woman, in her twenties, she had been pulled apart, her stomach torn right across, as if a wolf had tried to get at her guts." He took another pull at his beer, but I noticed he was still completely sober, judging by the glasses he had drunk enough to knock over a small horse. Murders did not normally affect Harry this badly.
"Come on, Harry. We've all seen bad cases."
"Not like this, it was bad enough that she was torn up, but she moved."
"Moved, what, you mean she was still alive?"
"No, I had checked for a pulse, she was dead, as dead as you can be."
"Then she can't have moved, it's impossible, surely you could have been mistaken, a twitch, someone moved her body, something to do with stored energy."
"She didn't just twitch, Arthur, she moved. She grabbed my arm." Harry finished his drink while I looked at him in astonishment. "She grabbed my arm and tried to bite it. She had enormous teeth, like a dogs."
I took a pull on my own drink and looked at him, he was perfectly serious, more serious than I had ever seen him before. I tried to work out whether he was mad, but I could not believe it, Harry was one of the most stable people I knew, I doubted anything could change him this quickly unless he was telling the truth. I took another, longer, pull on my beer.
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know."
"What?"
"I struggled free, and I had to struggle, then I ran. I don't like dead people, especially moving dead people. I radioed for help, but when it arrived they couldn't find her either."
"And what do they think of all this?"
"I think the inspector thinks I'm insane, but they found a little blood where I said the woman had been, and there were signs of a struggle in the alley. Some of them think I've hidden the body."
"Surely not."
"What would you believe, that the woman got up on here own and left, or that I'd taken her, for my own reasons."
"I'd believe you."
"Yeah, but what if it was Brian, or one of the other morons, would you believe them?"
I took his point and ordered another beer for him, he was getting through them far more quickly than I was. We sat in silence for a moment.
"We have to find her." I said, I had decided he was definitely telling the truth, his look had me almost convinced, but his voice when he described the way he had been grabbed, the horror in his voice. Harry was not easily rattled, but this had given him the scare of his life.
The next day I checked on the reactions to Harry's story, some thought he was making it up, some thought something had happened and Harry was in shock and that he'd made the story up while in shock and now believed it, some thought he had hidden the body of someone he'd either found or attacked himself. No one believed him, except me.
A week later I checked recent reports, again. This time there were other reports of biting attacks, and bodies with injuries that looked as if they had resulted from bites from dogs, but with teeth too far apart to be any known breed. There were also reports of missing bodies, some from the scene of the crime, others from the coroners.
They were not connected with Harry's story, or at least not to my knowledge. I started to widen my search, trying to keep at it in the spare time between cases. The reports of such incidents widened, most were thought to be due to carelessness, though various officers had noticed and were cracking down on the logging of bodies.
I was the first in our area to witness a killing.
I was on my way home when a call came through on my radio, I was the closest person to a possible murder, and the nearest backup was several minutes away. I was almost on top of the place it was happening and sped to the reported spot.
The incident was taking place near an alleyway and I stopped around the nearby corner in case I scared off the attacker, I ran from the car around the corner and could see two figures, they were not under the direct light of the nearby lamppost, but enough was reflected from a white wall for me to see them. As I gained ground I could see that one figure was holding the other, holding them up.
The holder saw me, and dropped the person, they slumped to the pavement as the other turned and began to run. It ran through the beam of the lamp light, seeming to duck slightly. As it ducked it turned, I had the impression of an open mouth, with huge teeth inside.
The attacker was running faster than I had a chance of catching up to, all ready having turned the corner to the next street before I had got to the body, covering five hundred metres to my twenty.
The body is a young man, crumpled as he collapsed. He is dead, showing neither pulse nor any signs of breathing. He only starts to move as I searched him for identification. The movement swift, grasping me with one hand while twisting his body around to lunge for me with his mouth. While he twists the world seems to slow, my defences take a long time coming up, he is almost on me before I am fighting back, but as he turns I can see two holes in his neck, about an inch or so apart, holes which have dripped blood, stains trailing down his neck.
His first thrust rips two holes in my jacket sleeve, the next barely misses as I twist away, out of his grasp. The next lunge meets with my shoe as I have started to run. It is only later when I realise I am walking oddly that I find a chunk of my heel missing, bite marks scraping away the plastic.
I hand in my report that night, having gone back to the station to check on other incidents like the one I had just been through. I had survived it, but there was no guarantee that others would have.
There were more reports of missing bodies, and the amount of attacks had increased by a huge amount. By searching the files on the computer I found the amount of missing persons reports had increased over ten fold, but that none had been chased up, and no further enquires had been filed. The amount of violent crimes had increased, but finding a lot of their victims was also proving difficult, the reports were there but the victims were not. I also came across the amount of missing police officers, it was far higher than it should have been, by an order of magnitude. I wondered why I had not been informed, or any of the other officers. Presumably because those-on-high wanted to keep the information quiet.
I could have confronted my superior, Inspector Philips, with the information, but it would have been futile, he would be ordered to keep quiet, and my job could be put on the line just because I wanted to know something they didn't want me to know. I would have to link the information myself.
A large amount of missing people, getting larger all the time, the dead coming back to life, an official silence about it. It all added up to an emergency. Fangs.
That's what the teeth had been, fangs. And holes in the neck. Vampires.
But how? Vampires don't just appear and exist, they're mythology. What turns an ordinary person into a vampire?
I sat back to think, something was happening, something bad. And I'd just caught myself up into it.
The news soon spread, I had spent three days without sleep, trying to work out what had happened. I had visited Harry, he had been suspended from duty until the incident about the missing body was cleared up. We both had the same haggard look. He knew I believed him now.
We went to the pub again, rather than worry Harry's wife any more, she was all ready distressed about his condition and problems at work.
We sat in one corner, looking like a couple of the undead ourselves, slumped over our drinks, both drinking heavily, neither getting drunk. Knowledge of real vampires tends to burn away the importance of anything else, and that includes sleep and alcohol.
There was a television in the opposite corner of the room, the sound down low unless anything interesting came on, like sport. When a news report came on only a few people stayed with their heads towards the screen, when the word 'vampire' appeared in large letters with a picture of a gruesome corpse coming back to life the sound was turned up in a hurry.
"This man was filmed after a sickening attack which left him with horrendous injuries, so bad that they were fatal. But as we arrived on the scene this happened..."
There was a film clip of the man getting up and grabbing at the medic who had been covering his body with a blanket, he lunged for the medic's neck, but when he saw the people behind the camera he started for them instead. As he came closer he opened his mouth, wide, a pair of large fangs protruded from where his canines should have been, they were at least half an inch long and seemed to grow as he approached.
The vampire, for that is what he looked like, was only feet away when the cameraman realised what danger he was in and turned to run. He kept a grip on the camera though, and survived, which gave the first real evidence of the vampires, if people believed it.
"Rubbish!" One patron shouted at the screen, "It's like a bad joke, it's all rubber and stuff, it doesn't even look real." He stopped as they showed another clip, the cameraman had turned as he and the rest of the reporting crew had reached their van. As they sped off the camera pointed back to the vampire, it had been gaining on their first brief sprint and was now trying to keep up with the van. But the injuries caused to it were working against it, tears across it's stomach grew from the rips they had been to great tears, and his guts flopped out to flap in front of his legs.
I felt my stomach churn, but had almost expected it, but I heard the sound of more than one person vomiting under and across tables. I looked across at Harry, he actually seemed less haggard than he had, I wondered if I had the same look, the relief that it was not a big secret any more, and that we were not the ones who were responsible for the reaction which was about to follow to start.
The panicking began.