“Who’s doing all this?” LaMastra punched the dashboard. “This can’t all be Vic Wingate. I mean—these are vampires we’re dealing with! Vampires don’t blow shit up. Do they?”
The flaming debris was raining down onto the rooftops of the houses near the elementary school. Already some of the houses were burning. “They do now,” Crow said in a drum-tight voice. “I guess they do whatever serves their purpose?”
“Purpose? Purpose? What purpose? I mean, why blow shit up if you just want to drink blood? I don’t get it.”
A line of cars three abreast were heading right for them, horns blaring, high beams flashing on and off. “Hold on,” Crow said as he spun the wheel. “This is going to get tricky.” Missy left the road and crunched along on the outside edge of the shoulder, at times clinging to the edge of the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the verge. He reached the line of cars and shot past; the drivers cursed at him and shot him the finger, but Crow spun the wheel back and shot back onto the road, accelerating into an open slot, racing into the burning town.
2
Ruger had kill zones set up at each of the big event areas that made up the Festival, using the handy tourist brochures so thoughtfully provided by the borough to locate the right spots. One of them was the Dead-End Drive-In, and that was already a slaughterhouse; another was the Hayride. He had teams hitting the college campus, the two movie theaters, the high school gymnasium, and the banquet hall of the Harvestman—everywhere tourists were gathering in large numbers with some possibility of containment. Vic’s fireworks were keeping things hopping. The bridges were gone, which meant that no one was getting out of Pine Deep. If they fled into the farms and state forest, then that would be a happy hunting ground for later on. By the time anyone on the outside figured out what was happening—if that was even possible—and mobilized any kind of police or military response, it would be way too late. The Man would be up by then.
3
Brinke Stevens flashed a bright smile as she handed the signed 8x10 studio portrait of her in a seductive pose. The young man she’d signed it for was blushing so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Don’t forget your candy,” she called, and the guy reached out a sweaty, trembling hand to take the bag of Pine Deep Authentic Candy Corn. Everyone who got a picture got some candy. The fan pressed the picture to his chest and sort of scuttled away, already tearing open the plastic bag.
Brinke cut a look at Debbie Rochon, who was signing her own stack of pictures, and they both cocked a knowing eyebrow.
“Gotta love the fanboys,” Debbie said under her breath.
“Each and every one.”
The seats were all filled with fans who already had their pictures and who were stuffing handfuls of candy corn into their mouths. They all looked strangely happy.
“Ladies?” They turned to see Dave Kramer, one of Crow’s friends, who was the liaison between the Festival and the actresses. “We’re going to run the first film in forty minutes. You need a break from this…?”
Brinke shook her head. “Nah. These guys have been waiting all day.”
“We’re good,” agreed Debbie. “We can do a pee break after the movie’s on.”
That’s when the lights went out. The lines of fans groaned, milled, mumbled. A few of them tittered as if this was all a wonderful kind of fun.
“Someone get the tent flaps!” Kramer yelled, and when nobody moved he hustled over and did it himself, pulling back the pumpkin-colored canvas to let in the pale afternoon light. Thunder boomed over and over again and a wet breeze swept into the tent.
A Pine Deep cop was on post outside and he turned when the flap was opened.
“Everything okay in there?”
“Lights went out.”
“Okay,” said the cop and pushed past Kramer. He turned on his big flashlight and headed right to the signing table, playing the beam over the two actresses. “Hello, ladies…sorry for the inconvenience.”
They shrugged. “Not a problem,” Brinke said. “You know what’s going on?”
“Don’t sweat it…it’s all under control.” The cop kept his light right in their faces.
“Officer,” said Debbie, “you mind with the light?”
The cop grinned, and they could see the white of his teeth even past the harsh glare of the flash. “You bitches are the scream queens…aren’t you?”
A half-dozen bulky figures crowded the tent’s opening; college football team sweatshirts and pasty faces. They shoved Kramer roughly out of the way. At the table, Officer Golub bent toward the actresses, his white grin stretching wider and wider.
“Let’s hear you scream,” he whispered and then snapped his teeth at them.
4
Jim O’Rear wasn’t scheduled to give his demonstration of film stunt techniques until that evening. Knowing that Crow was shorthanded he volunteered to spend the afternoon walking the grounds at the Hayride to make sure all the attractions were in top shape. There were reporters from all the big papers as well as from the major horror magazines—the last thing Crow would need was a shot of tourists stuck at, say, the Cave of the Wolfman with no werewolf, no spooky lighting, no smoke effects.
He had just completed the circuit and was heading to the Haunted House to give BK the thumbs-up when he heard screams coming from the Scream Queen tent which, despite its name, was not scheduled for anything loud until the marathon started, and according to his clipboard that was nearly forty minutes from now. He listened. O’Rear had heard a lot of screams—as an actor and stuntman on movies and on dozens of haunted attractions; he knew the difference between canned screams and real. This sounded way too real. Even for a theme park designed by Malcolm “I-have-no-limits” Crow.
He stared in the direction of the tent. The screams kept going, on and on.
“Shit,” he said, and started running.
5
The creature hit BK like a missile and together they crashed backward onto the flatbed’s deck. The thing lunged at him, trying to bite him.
“What the fu—?” BK started to say, but the hands around his throat were like steel bands, instantly cutting off his air. Black poppies started blooming at the edges of his vision.
Though he did not understand what was happening, or even recognize the nature of the person attacking him, BK had been in too many fights to go down this easy. He jammed his left fist under the attacker’s jaw and shoved upward, pushing the teeth away from his throat, then hooked a sharp right-hand hooking palm heel into the creature’s ear. BK was a very big, very strong man and the shot should have taken all the steam out of this guy, even if he was hopped up on crack. The open-handed blow should almost certainly have popped the eardrum, but the snarling thing on top of him shook it off with barely a moment’s loosening of its grip.
BK’s mind was going dark from oxygen starvation. So, his next hit was a killing blow, a two-knuckle rising punch into the attacker’s Adam’s apple. He heard the hyoid bone crunch; instantly the pressure slackened and the attacker reeled back, clutching his throat. BK came off the flatbed and was expecting to see the son of a bitch go down dead. Instead he shook itself like a wet dog and raised its head.
That’s when BK got his first real look at him.
His attacker was a teenage boy, maybe seventeen, with a pimply face and shaggy hair. His eyes were dark, his mouth full of fangs…but suddenly BK realized, with a sick and terrible certainty, that this was not another Halloween costume.
The monster rushed him again.
6
Screenwriter Stephen Susco was yelling at the projectionist. The power had gone off barely ten minutes into screening of his film, The Grudge 2. The house lights were out and the emergency lights were next to useless. Now there was some kind of fight going on in the back rows of the theater.
The projectionist never appeared; neither did the ushers. Susco turned to fellow screenwriter-director James Gunn, who was scheduled to screen his flick Slither in a couple of hours and in a low voice said, “This is the sort of shit you’d expect in LA.”
Gunn spread his hands. “Small Town, America. What can I tell you?”
“Hey, I grew up near here. Don’t bust on Bucks County.”
A sound made them look up to see a dark, round object come sailing out through the projectionist’s window, arc over the crowd, and land with a wet thud on the stage. Both screenwriters looked at it, smiling at first because this was Halloween and they thought it was a joke. The object rolled toward them and came to a wobbly stop five feet away. The smiles drained away from both their faces as they recognized the face—and head—of the projectionist.
The back doors of the theater burst open with a crash and a dozen pale-faced strangers filled the doorway. Dixie McVey led the way. He pointed at the men on the stage. “Fetch!” he said. The killers rushed past him and the dying began.
7
The woman in the party dress staggered out of the firelit shadows with a ragged bundle in her blood-streaked arms. Her dress was torn, and tears had cut tracks through the soot stains on her face. It had probably been a pretty face once, but not now.
“My baby!” she screamed as she lurched toward the hospital entrance. Flaming fragments from the TV station next door fell all around her. “God! Please help my baby!”
Most of the crowd that had been thronged outside of the ER entrance had bolted and fled when the station blew up. Only three people were left—a nurse, an EMT, and a pizza delivery guy with a bloody rag pressed to his face. They stood in a loose knot watching the rain of flaming debris, but they turned as the woman staggered toward them.
“My baby!” The woman’s voice was shrill with anguish, and the watchers could see that the baby she carried in her arms was horribly limp. She stopped walking and just stood there. “Help my baby!”
The pizza delivery guy took a tentative step toward her. “Lady! Come on! Get in here.” A chunk of steaming pipe crashed down only yards behind the woman, but she was too out of it to even twitch.