That Thing At the Zoo - 01 by James R. Tuck Read Free Book Online Page B

the center of her spine, the bloodsucker spun and hissed at me. Dammit, there went the element of surprise.
    Stepping out into the open I pulled the trigger.
    The vampire screamed down the tunnel, twisting and crawling on the walls and slithering up to the ceiling. My bullets missed until she was right in front of me. She zoomed up, body nearly brushing the barrel of my pistol. I fired and a bullet plowed into her chest from inches away. Blood splashed across me and she crumpled to the wet floor of the tunnel. The slide on my gun locked back.
    Somehow I had held onto the gun. My brain told my thumb to flick the magazine release, but it just lay there against the grip, useless. I used my other hand to drop the slide then put a new clip in and unlock the slide. It jerked forward, stripping another bullet of the clip and putting it in the pipe, ready to fire.
    The Nosferatu lay on its back, a hole in the center of her chest where her heart should be. She lay still, legs folded underneath her body, arms spread to display the tatters of her wings. She looked dead.
    She wasn’t. If she were dead she would be dust. Even with her heart blown to jelly in her chest she could heal this. Given enough time and a little blood, she could repair this damage. Sooner or later a rat would wander too close and she would strike, drinking its strength, regaining some of hers.
    I wasn’t going to let that happen.
    Pointing the gun at her head, I pulled the trigger and splashed her brains out on the concrete. For a second she lay there, still and dead. Then corruption crawled through her body. She crumbled into dust like a regular vampire, turning to sludge in the sewer water and washing away.
    I stumbled and fell on my ass in the water. The long hard fight and breathing in toxic fumes had taken their toll. Exhaustion rode on my back, pushing me forward, bending me in half. Pushing me to just lie down .
    I wanted to. If I lay down here I could move past this life. Go be with my family. It would be so easy. My bones weighed a thousand pounds. I couldn’t carry them any more.
    Easy.
    My head sank lower, almost touching my knees.
    My eyes closed.
    So.
    Easy.
    Too fucking easy.
    I couldn’t go to where my family was on the other side if I gave up. That would be suicide, and Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that was a mortal sin.
    Mortal sins send you to hell.
    Pushing myself up, I fought off a wave of nausea.
    Turning, I took the first step to getting out of the sewers. One footstep down the tunnel that would take me to the closest manhole.
    Before I took a second step I heard a sound that chased chills up my spine.

10
     
    Nothing in this world is sadder than the cry of a baby. It reaches deep inside you and wraps its tiny fingers around your soul, making you instinctively need to help.
    It started softly, hard to hear over the water running through the tunnel. Relentlessly it rose and fell, the loneliest sound in the universe. The world closed down around that cry. It rolled around me, plaintive and desperate. The baby needed, and the father in me rose up wanting to save it. All the while my blood ran cold through my veins.
    Slowly I turned to look down the tunnel, vertebrae grinding against each other with tension. I traced the flashlight down until it shone on the pile of stuff the Nosferatu had been kneeling beside a moment ago.
    The cries were coming from the pile.
    Slowly, one foot in front of the other, I moved down the tunnel. It looked like a pile of rags spilling up the curved concrete wall. It was thick, different textures wadded together with scraps trailing around it. The flashlight quivered over it with each step closer. The baby cries began to get louder, becoming brittle and shrill.
    I realized what I was looking at a moment before the smell assaulted me, punching me in the nose through the sewer gas.
    Rot.
    Rich and meaty rot so pungent it cut through the green gag of sewage. The pile of rags was made of the missing skins from the