13 Bullets: A Vampire Tale

Incident report filed by

Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley, 10/4/83

(recorded on reel-to-reel audiotape):

Through the rain there wasn't much to see. The all-night diner stood at the corner of two major streets. Its plate glass windows spilled a little light on the pavement. I handed the binoculars to Webster, my partner. "Do you see him?" I asked.

The subject in question, one Piter Byron Lares (probably an alias), sat at the diner's counter, hunched over in deep conversation with a middle-aged waitress. He would be a big man if he stood up, but leaning over like that, he didn't look so imposing. His face was very pale, and his black hair stood up in a wild shock of frizzy curls. An enormous red sweater hung off him--another attempt at camouflaging his size, I figured. He wore thick eyeglasses with tortoiseshell rims.

"I don't know what they teach you at Fed school, Arkeley, but I've never heard of one of them needing glasses," Webster said, handing me back the binoculars.

"Shut up." The week before I had found six dead girls in a cellar in Liverpool, West Virginia. They'd been having a slumber party. They were in so many pieces it took three lab technicians working night and day in a borrowed school gymnasium just to figure out how many bodies we had. I was not in a good mood. I had beaten one of the asshole's minions to dust with my bare hands just to find out his alias. I wasn't going to slow down now.

Lares stood up, his head still bowed, and took a leather wallet out of his pocket. He began to count out small bills. Then he seemed to think of something. He looked up, around the diner. He rose to his full height and looked out at the street.

"Did he just make us?" Webster demanded. "In this weather?"

"I'm not sure," I said. About a gallon of bright red blood erupted across the diner's front window. I couldn't see anything inside.

"Shit!" I screamed, and pushed my way out of the car, across the sidewalk, the rain soaking me instantly. I burst inside the diner, my star bright on my jacket, but he was already gone and there was nobody left alive inside to be impressed. The waitress lay on the floor, her head nearly torn off her body. You read about them and you expect vampire wounds to be dainty little things, maybe a pair of bad hickeys. Lares had chewed most of the woman's neck off. Her jugular vein stuck out like the neck of a deflated balloon.

Blood spilled off the counter and splattered the ceiling. I unholstered my service revolver and stepped around the body. There was a door in the back. I had to stop myself from racing to it. If he was in the back and I ran into him in the shadows by the men's room I wouldn't survive my curiosity. I headed back out into the rain where Webster already had the car running. He'd been busy rousing the locals. A helicopter swooped low over our heads with a racket that was sure to get complaints tomorrow morning. The chopper's spotlight blasted holes in the shadows all around the diner. Webster got us moving, pulled us around the alley behind the restaurant. I peered through the rain at the Dumpsters and the scattered garbage. Nothing happened. We had plenty of backup watching the front of the restaurant. We had heavy weapons guys coming in. The helicopter could stay up there all night if it needed to. I tried to relax.

"SWAT's moving," Webster told me. He replaced his radio handset.

The Dumpster in the alley shifted an inch. Like some homeless guy inside had rolled over in his sleep. Both...