Hunter of the Dead by Stephen Kozeniewski Read Free Book Online Page A

come on!”
    The thing began to rise from its position, and Nico watched in horror as its mangled face began to reassemble itself mere seconds after being torn to shreds. When all the pumps were on he took Price’s hand and felt the older man pull him over the counter. Together they hurried out into the parking lot.
    The Saab stood at its fueling spot, the only car in the customer lot. Price grabbed the hose out of one of the pumps, depressed the handle, secured it with a few layers of duct tape, then dropped it to the ground so it began spraying a puddle of gasoline. He repeated the process at the next hose, and gestured to Nico to do the same.
    “Is your car here?”
    “Um, no,” Nico said, shaking his head, “I take the bus.”
    “Shit.”
    Price dug into his pocket and tossed Nico a set of keys which he nearly fumbled, but caught before they splashed into the ever-widening pool of gasoline.
    “Go and pull my car around. You know how to drive stick?”
    “What about Jackie and that guy?”
    “They’re dead, kid! Go and get my car!”
    Nico nodded and stumbled, knocking his knee badly against one of the pumps before getting a handle on his feet and pounding off towards the back lot where the employees parked. Even if it hadn’t been the only car in the lot, Price’s mint green 1963 Cadillac convertible would’ve been impossible to miss.
    He stumbled, his messed-up knee hurting a lot worse than he had expected, and fumbled through Price’s keychain before finding the right one. The car door was heavy and hard to open, and Nico had only ever driven standard once before, but somehow he managed to get the prehistoric behemoth moving and pulled it back around to the front.
    The creature had emerged from the Fill-Up, and to Nico’s horror it looked exactly as it had the moment it had walked in – not healthy, exactly, but utterly unharmed despite getting a faceful of deli slicer. It hissed at Price, who was backing away from the entrance to the store, and subtly motioning for Nico to keep his distance. Price’s green Fill-Up polo was off, his rock-hard abs on display.
    Not bad for an old guy.
    Price had wrapped his shirt around one of the window squeegees that was stationed at every fuel pump.
    “Yeah, I recognize you, motherfucker,” Price said loudly. “You’re supposed to be one of The Damned, right?”
    The creature – the “Damned,” Price had named it – its ears rose, pointing nearly straight up. So it was intelligent, if horrifying. Its tongue fluttered, as though it were trying to speak with its chapless mouth. It stepped towards him, more cautiously than it had been acting up until now.
    Is that monstrosity really afraid of Carter Price?
    “What does it mean that you’re loose? All bets are off now? Cicatrice is gunning for us?”
    Then, in a night full of awful noises, Nico heard the most heart-rapingly awful sound of his entire life. A noise came from The Damned’s throat that it took him a moment to identify as a gruesome chuckle. It shook its head from side to side.
    Price began to back up, surreptitiously moving closer to the car. The Damned slowly followed after him, and Nico watched with mounting anxiety as it stepped into the slowly broadening puddle of gasoline.
    “So you don’t know me, huh? This is just a co-inky-dink?”
    The Damned nodded; its soulless eyes almost mirthful. Price nodded right back.
    “Yeah, well, you might be king shit of the vampires – or that’s what they say anyway – but I know one thing that kills every vampire dead. Even king shits.”
    The Damned paused and glanced skyward, furrowing its brow and squinching its eyes tight as though looking for something. Then its gaze returned to Price and it made a circular motion with its arm.
    The sun’s not rising anytime soon , it seemed to be saying.
    “No, not that,” Price said, opening his Zippo and sparking it alight with a single flip of his wrist, “this.”
    Price lit the makeshift torch he had