The Cowboy and Vampire

Lizzie and Tucker lay tightly wound in each other's arms. They had pushed the two single beds together to give them more space, but still only used part of one.



"Honey" whispered Tucker, "we need our own plan."



"What do you mean?"



"A fallback. I got a bad feeling about all this. We may end up needing to rely just on ourselves. And Dad. And Lenny when he gets here."



"What do you suggest?"



"The only thing that is keeping us here is the fact that Julius can sense you. There has got to be some way to create a decoy so he thinks you're still here while we sneak out the back door."



"While that may be ideal, I don't think it's possible. Vampiric sensations are quite strong, I'm coming to realize."



"There's got to be something we can do. I'll bet Lenny can come up with..." Lizzie put her hand to Tucker's lips.



"I think we should trust Lazarus' plan. Tucker, we have more important things to talk about."



"Like what? What could be more important than..."



"I think maybe you should leave." Tucker started to speak in protest, but Lizzie held her hand over his mouth. "I mean it this time. It's possible that I'll survive this ordeal, since only a limited number of things can kill me and Julius wants me alive. Neither of those are true for you."



"I ain't leaving you. End of discussion."



She sighed and squeezed his hand. "I didn't really expect anything else. But what about your dad? Is this really the way that you want him to die?"



"No, but I'm guessing I couldn't talk him into leaving either. He's pretty fond of you."



"All right, a compromise. You, your Dad, and Lenny stay with me under whatever arrangements Lazarus makes. I can offer a certain amount of protection, since Julius can't afford to destroy me outright. And you can protect me from attack, should the pain of the transformative process overwhelm me. But promise me, Tucker, no heroics. I want you alive."



Tucker kissed her. "Okay, no heroics. Truth is, I want to stay alive too. I'd like to spend a few decades with you under more normal conditions. I mean, normal as life can be with a Vampire."



Lizzie sat up. The outline of her nude body was silhouetted against the backlight of the moon shining through the curtains. Tucker leaned up and kissed the cleft of her breasts as she stroked the top of his head. "Make love to me, Tucker. I want to feel you inside me before the sun rises. I want your body to be my last sensation before I die."



Tucker pulled her down close to him and their bodies melted into one another.



When Tucker awoke, the new day was well hidden. The special glass in the windows sealed the rays of the sun out tightly, as dark as the inside of a coffin, he guessed. He reached for the lamp by the bed and, under its light, studied Lizzie's pale form with a smile that was half sadness. Rex and Alexandra watched him as he dressed, then padded quietly down to the kitchen with him, where Dad was already sitting with a cup of coffee and an irritable scowl.



"Shit, boy, thought you was aiming on wasting the whole day."



"I was. Wish I'd never woke up."



A matronly cook set a plate of eggs, beans, and corn tortillas in front of him, smiling briefly as he nodded in appreciation.



"Thanks, ma'am."



She disappeared as silently as she had come. "Probably tonight, you know," he said to his father.



Dad nodded and hoisted a black case onto the table. "Ran down to Hoback Junction while you was in New York City. " He flipped the case open. A new Casull with an eight-inch barrel lay nestled in protective foam. There were two cases of ammo beside it. "Thought this might come in handy. Didn't have time to give it to you before."



Tucker whistled and pulled the pistol out to admire it. "Damn. It's beautiful."



"Should be. Cost more'n you'll make all year. There's a holster too. That, I made." He pulled it out, a beautifully tooled leather affair with flowers cut into it. "I was kind of bored while you were gone."



Tucker's eyes shone. "I don't know what to say."



"How about thanks?"



"Thanks. Now you eat while I load it up." He filled the chamber and then shoved cartridges into the loops around the waist.



Afterward, Tucker stood up and cinched it around his lean waist. It was a perfect fit, hanging low on his hip. He pulled it free with a couple of quick draws, spun the massive pistol around his finger and snugged it home inside the holster.



"Hope I don't have to use it."



"You will."



"Listen, Dad, things are about to get rough. Ain't no way Julius and his gang are gonna rest until they get what they want, or else we put 'em down."



"Tell me something I don't already know."



"I don't want nothing to happen to you."



"I don't want nothing to happen to you, either."



"Shut up and listen. You are too old for this kind of shit." They glared at each other a long minute. "All right, here's the thing. I got you into this mess, and I don't want nothing bad to happen."



"It's my choice."



Tucker nodded. "I know. But I want you to promise me something. I want you to stay with Lizzie, no matter what. If I can't know that she's okay, I can't do nothing. You're the only person I can trust. She's worth everything to me and I want you to guard over her like my life depended on it. 'Cause it does."



"Fair enough. But I don't want you..."



They were interrupted by a commotion outside, and a young, tanned guard burst in. "Your friend is here, Mr. Tucker."



"All right! Reinforcements. Let's go say 'hey' to the boys."



As it turned out, the boys consisted only of Lenny, who was already inside the gate, a pair of massive duffel bags in the dust by his feet. He was eyeing the perimeter defense with unabashed awe.



"Lenny," Tucker called as they ambled out onto the porch, "over here. Glad you could make it."



"Where the hell is the rest of the LonePine militia?" Dad yelled.



"I'm it," he said sheepishly. "You know how militias go. Bob was off to see his kids. Red had too much work to be done, and Frank, well, Frank just wasn't too keen on fighting Vampires."



"That's okay. We'll be fine. At least you made it. I'm surprised June let you come."



"She didn't, uhh, she said it'd be fine."



"Goddamn it, Lenny, you didn't tell her, did you?"



He nodded absently. "More or less. Are those miniguns? I've never seen these new ones. Can I take a closer look?"



Tucker shook his head and put in a chew. "Whyn't you have one of the boys show you around and then let's talk. We're expecting company tonight."



"I brought some party favors," he said, grinning and nudging one of the duffles with the toe of his military-surplus combat boot.



After his tour, they all sat on the veranda sipping beers with the dogs curled up in the shade. Lenny spread his arsenal out on the planking. "That's a .300 WinMag. Bull barrel, two-ounce set trigger and an 18 by 200 power floating scope. You can damn near read a license plate at over a mile."



"Sounds handy," Dad said. "If I wanted to read license plates."



"It also shoots a 300-grain bullet at close to 3,500 feet per second. I've used it in thousand-yard target shoots and shot three bullets so close together, you could cover the holes with a silver dollar." They whistled appreciatively. "Of course, I brought several shotguns modified to shoot wooden ammo, including this little number." He pulled a nasty-looking gun from a shoulder holster. It was a sawed-off double barrel, the stock cut away and wrapped in duct tape to look more like a cheap version of a dueling pistol. The points of the wooden bullets were visible in the shadowy holes. "Plus, I built something special." He pointed at an immense, vaguely gunlike object.



"Looks like a spaceman gun. One of them lasers," Dad said. "This here is a precision stake shooter. Very accurate. It's an A-10



that I salvaged off a Warthog from Desert Storm. Normally shoots 30-millimeter projectiles really fast at enemy tanks. I convinced it to shoot stakes, 30-millimeter stakes. Accurate to 300 yards."



"How do you keep 'em from turning into toothpicks?" Dad asked.



"Well that's the beauty of it. I encased the wood with machine-tooled metal jackets so thin and light that they shred away on impact. They're snugged down into the original brass, reloaded with a lighter load. It's beautiful. Just beautiful."



"Lenny," Tucker said, "you are a genius. You been busy since I left."



He nodded. "Figured you'd be needing some help soon."



The noontime heat took its toll as the day dragged on. The three men sat in the shade and contemplated how many beers would be okay without impairing their abilities, come the evening. The Adamite security force sweated silently, patrolling the walls and peering out into the shimmering waste. Down below, in the comfort of air conditioning but with nerves frazzled by tension, more humans scanned monitors or else sat rigidly, listening through electronic ears.



Despite the wall of electronic defense, it was Rex that sensed them first. He sat up to sniff at the air, a puzzled look on his face.



Alexandra opened an eye to watch him.



"What's wrong with your dog?" Dad asked. "He's acting funny."



"He always acts funny," Tucker replied and pushed at Rex with his boot heel. Instead of lying back down, he whined and looked anxiously toward the gate. Alexandra sprang up, looking back and forth between the shimmering sky and Rex.



"Rex, what the hell's the matter with you?" Dad said.



"Aww, shit," Tucker swore. "They're here."



"They can't be. It's the middle of the day."



"I'm telling you, Rex ain't never wrong. Take cover." He grabbed hold of the dogs and pulled them close as Dad and Lenny looked around bewildered. "Get down, I mean it."



As if in confirmation, the first rocket fell. It looked like nothing more than an errant firework, some lost remnant of the fourth of July drifting lazily over the adobe walls.



"What the..." Dad started to say but Lenny leaned across the table and took him by the arm, dragging him under.



"Incoming!" he yelled.



The explosion ripped through the courtyard, sending shards of sandstone through the air like a swarm of angry bees. Smoke swirled thick and there were cries of alarm as armed soldiers moved toward the walls. The mounted guns swiveled in unison and began to chatter with an endless roar that rained burning brass in glittering arcs.



"Jesus Christ," Tucker shouted as the hiss of another rocket filled the air.



Lenny scooped up the massive sniper rifle and clambered up the wall, bolting a live round in and scanning the desert. Across the vast expanse, he sighted in on a dusty cloud of rocket vapor and a group of grim-faced men in desert camos. One was already staggering back under the impact of launch. The miniguns locked on to the descending missile and a hail of bullets intercepted it, detonating it harmlessly in front of the walls. Lenny sighted, gently stroked the trigger, and with an echoing blast, sent a bullet racing across the desert. It caught the soldier just above the belt and drove him stumbling backward, the launcher falling to his side. The rest of the group scattered, their faces mirroring disbelief. He racked another round in and drove a shot into the launcher, smiling with tight satisfaction when it jumped sideways from the impact.



Dad crawled up beside him on the wall, lugging the modified stake gun. "Shoot them bastards with this, shoot them with this.



They won't stay dead."



"These ain't Vampires. They're human." As if on cue, a contingent of camouflaged men rose up out of the dust and scrub of the desert, their heads swathed in mesh and leaves. They leveled automatic rifles toward the compound and round after round crashed into the walls and skipped off the stones. Two men fell away, mortally wounded. A third cried out and spun away from the wall, clutching his shoulder.



"Shit," Tucker said, joining them, "I don't think Lazarus figured on this."



"When you say Lazarus," Lenny said, calmly, feeding another shell in, "you don't mean the real Lazarus, do you?" He squeezed off another round and another man fell.



"I sure do," Tucker responded, shouldering a Steyr bullpup offered by a frightened young man ducking out of view below them.



"So this guy actually knew Jesus?"



Tucker rattled off a long burst and grimaced at the responding shriek of agony. "Knew him, hell, Jesus raised him from the dead.



Made him a Vampire."



"This sure does change things." He pointed at a box of ammo at the table below and Dad handed it up to him.



"You mean the battle plan?"



"Naw. We're fine, long as they don't have any choppers or many more of them missiles. I'm talking about Jesus." A bullet slapped into the edge and he winced, the slivers of stone cutting into his cheek. "The whole thing has always seemed so mysterious, but this guy knew the real thing. No mystery. No faith. Historical fact. Damn, Tucker, the implications are astounding."



Tucker slapped a new clip in and peeked over the wall. "The only implications that astound me are how it's gonna feel to be dead." The mercenaries outside fell back to the cover of some monolithic sandstone columns, just out of range of the miniguns but still well within the range of Lenny, who was casually drilling holes through whoever was stupid enough to reveal themselves.



The sun bore down and the minutes dragged by. Tucker slipped away long enough to make sure Dad stayed put in Lizzie's room. Though reluctant to miss out on the action, he obliged, sitting with a stern jaw in the darkened room. He pulled up a chair, rested a thermite-loaded shotgun across his lap, and held the Casull in one hand. Rex and Alexandra cowered under the bed.



Back on the wall, Lenny was watching the activity through the lens of his scope. "Uh-oh," he murmured.



"What? What?" Tucker demanded anxiously.



"Nothing, just get your head down."



Tucker ducked, but not before seeing the mercenaries spring into view, a pair of them holding rocket launchers. The rest concentrated heavy fire along the wall, pinning the defenders down. "If they launch another in here, we're toast," Tucker said and already the whoosh of a missile cut through the small arms fire. Then another.



But instead of falling into the compound, they exploded forty yards in front of the main gate. Simultaneously, a new sound could be heard. A popping sound. And then electric flashes of intense light. "Jesus Christ," Lenny mumbled. "They've ignited the bouncing betties."



They both peeked over to see that indeed, the explosion had triggered the sensitive mines. Hard rubber balls the size of plums were springing up from the sand and exploding with a sizzle, splashing thermite that with its intense heat fused the sand to glass.



"Crap. They ain't here to kill us. They're just softening us up for tonight."



Tucker nodded grimly. "It's gonna be a long night."



"It won't be long if there ain't no mines left. The Vampires'll be able to walk right up and ring the doorbell like trick-or-treaters."



"I got an idea. There's a tunnel runs from here to some ruins over in those distant hills behind the bad guys. If we can find it, you could take that long rifle and hunker down in the rocks. I bet you could flush 'em out in short order."



"Sounds like a real plan," Lenny said. "Where should we start looking?"



Tucker peeked out across the landscape and tried to imagine the tunnel lying cold and empty below the rocks and cactus. He jumped down and entered the house, Lenny close on his heels, stuffing ammo into the oversized pockets of his cargo pants.



They wound their way down into the cool caverns beneath the house and ran from door to door, opening them into various rooms. Some were lined with books, others with pale-faced men watching video screens or else working at keyboards, manipulating the guidance systems of the guns. Other rooms were empty save for the bodies of Vampires, peacefully dead to the onslaught above.



After fifteen minutes of searching, they had yet to find any sort of access. Tucker squatted down to think next to the dark pool of water where Lazarus so recently had soaked. "Jesus, where the hell could it be?" He scuffed a pebble loose and dropped it in the water, staring at the rings it made.



Lenny was leaning on his gun. "We're running out of time, Tucker."



"I know I know." He threw another stone savagely into the still water. "Has to be somewhere that's easy to get to but well hidden. He wouldn't trust Lizzie's only line of escape to something obvious." The empty chamber echoed his frustration as he swore under his breath. "Where the hell would I hide a tunnel?"



Lenny scratched his ear. "Someplace obvious. Someplace you could look right at and still not know" He looked up and Tucker was staring at him.



"Christ, Lenny." He jumped into the water, his boot heels sinking into the sandy bottom. He ducked his head under and felt around the smooth walls. Near the bottom was a hole not two feet across. He came up for a breath and then dove under. It was a tight fit into a narrow tube that horseshoed into a similar pool, this one rough and unfinished. Beyond the edges, lit by a smoky torch, cavern walls reflected slightly in the gleam. Walls, and a blackness. The mouth of a tunnel.



He returned to the other side and when he broke the surface, Lenny was already wrapping the gun in a plastic bag, the contents, Tucker assumed, of one of the many pockets of his combat vest. He clipped a flashlight to his waist and without a word jumped in. He clapped Tucker on the back and disappeared with a splash.



Tucker raced back upstairs, commandeering all the able bodies he could muster. Armed and ready, they squatted out of the line of fire and waited. He imagined Lenny making his way through the tunnel, prayed he was in shape enough to make it fast. Fast indeed. Twenty-one minutes after parting ways, the first shot rang out.



From that distance, the report took several seconds to carry across. He saw a flash of smoke from the distant rocks. Then a man screamed and tumbled prostrate into the open. Only then did the low rumble of the shot reach his ears. From there on, the fighting took a turn for the grim. Trapped between an unseen sniper and a well-armed contingent, Julius' mercenaries struggled to hold their own, and lost. Those that made a break for it were cut down by the men on the walls, and those that sat and prayed were only waiting in line for the next shot. Faced with no choice, they chose the obvious. They surrendered.



Tucker watched through field glasses as one of them waved a white flag. Some thirty of the mercenaries, barely half of those that initiated the assault, slowly walked towards the compound, weapons left behind. Once in range, the laser-guided mounts swiveled noiselessly to cover them, and Tucker stood on top of the wall and shouted.



"Howdy, boys, glad you could make it. Now I want all of you to strip down to your skivvies and then keep your hands up high.



You got to know that you're beat. Don't make us slaughter you." The mercenaries obliged, swearing up a storm, and Lazarus'



men moved out to usher them inside. Half naked and wholly demoralized, they were herded into a storage facility and locked up tight.



Lenny came up from the basement, dripping wet, cradling the rifle. His eyes were glazed. "This is some nasty business, Tucker.



Nasty business."



"I reckon it'll get worse." Tucker eyed the horizon and the sun hanging poised there. "I reckon it'll get a lot worse."



When Lizzie awoke, Tucker was holding her hand and already speaking, but the words were soft and incomplete, barely penetrating the fog of death slowly clearing in her head.



"... baby... got to wake up... baby... wake up... it's me..."



"Tucker," she said sleepily. She squeezed his hand, careful not to crush the bones. "I missed you."



"I missed you too, now get up. They already attacked and we are in a bad way."



This time, the words were instantly understood and she sat bolt upright. "Oh my God. He's here?"



"No, worse. He sent some Adamites ahead to - shit, I can't believe I just said that."



"What?"



"Adamites. I said Adamites. They wasn't Adamites. I'm not an Adamite. They were humans. They were not Vampires." He shook his head. "Anyway we had a pretty rough go of it for a while. Didn't lose many men, but we lost damn near all of our defenses. When Julius shows, the only thing between us and him is the wall."



She was silent, then quickly stood to dress. "That won't be enough. He's close. Confident. We have to run. We can stay far enough ahead until the time has passed." She tugged his arm. "C'mon." He didn't budge. "Tucker, let's go. Get Dad and Lenny.



And Elita. Let's go."



Tucker shook his head, his features drawn thin by lack of sleep and accentuated by the shadows. "It's too late for that, Lizzie. If we leave here now, we're goners. Ain't none of us would make it through this except you and then only 'til he was done with you. We're stuck here for the time being."



A moment of panic coursed through her face like a flush but she swallowed deeply and regained herself. "Has Lazarus been told?"



"Dad went to find Sully and him both."



As if on cue, the sounds of frantic activity from below swelled into a commotion as the Vampires burst into their version of life.



They could both hear Lazarus, his voice booming over the confusion as he organized the chaos into a last-ditch defense.



Thundering footsteps stopped outside the door. It was Sully and Lazarus, Dad following, winded, behind. Farther still was Elita, her normally calm face showing faint traces of fear as she looked over her shoulder. If this defense failed, she would perish.



Julius would never suffer her to live. Old habits die hard and the will to live, taken for granted for close to 3,000 years, was deeply entrenched and not something she was in a hurry to break.



Lazarus drew to a stop, his features pinched. "We have little time." He took Tucker's arm briefly. "Again, we owe you a great debt. Without you and your friend, all might have been lost."



Tucker shrugged. "Pretty much everything was lost anyway."



"True, the perimeter defense suffered much. But lives were saved."



"Guess it's better than waking up dead."



"Lazarus," Lizzie said, brushing past Tucker, "we have to leave. I can't put the rest of you at risk."



"Out of the question. We have made our choice. No one is here against their will. We can defeat Julius. You will be safe here.



Now you must excuse me." He turned and raced down the hall, followed by a group of Vampires with determined faces.



The ragtag group stood outside and inside Lizzie's room, unsure of what to do next, but sure that doing nothing wouldn't help.



Lizzie looked down the hall at Lenny lugging weapons toward them. He offered one to Elita, who curled her lip in scorn, then examined her fingernails as if offering confirmation of her weapon of choice.



Sully was not so proud, taking a shotgun and shoulder bag of ammunition, giggling nervously as he slung it over his shoulder.



"Olive drab just goes with anything," he said lightly.



Lenny passed the same equipment to Dad, who took it and leaned with his back against the wall just outside the door, making it clear he was on duty again.



The Adamite assault had perilously weakened the defenses and Lazarus now attempted his best to repair them before the final assault. All hands were enlisted to replace and repair the damage until they reached a point where little else could be done except wait. And wait they did. Every pair of eyes cast nervously about. Every pair of ears strained against the silence. Every nerve was drawn taut, but nothing stirred in the desert. No motion. No sound, not even the call of coyotes or nightbirds. Even the wind seemed dead, or at least undead. Hidden away.



Those who had more to lose than just their lives, more to lose than immortality, gathered together in the drawing room to say nothing.



"You okay darling?" Tucker asked Lizzie.



"No, not so great."



"It is probably the power inside you," Lazarus said.



"It's probably those goddamn cigarettes," Tucker said, nodding his head toward Elita who leaned on the window sill, smoking her exotic cigarettes and staring nervously into the night. She was dressed for war, a leather miniskirt paired with a sleeveless denim blouse and men's combat boots shined to a mirror-like state.



She looked beautiful, which irritated Tucker to no end as he watched Lenny watch her as surreptitiously as possible. He glared over at her. "I don't suppose you'd go outside to smoke those?"



She smiled coolly. "I'd love to, but I might just run off. I'm not trustworthy, you know."



"I'm well aware of that."



"Let her be," Lizzie said. "We're all nervous."



"Only thing I'm nervous about is dying from secondhand smoke before the Vampires kill me," Tucker grumbled.



"They aren't going to kill you," Lazarus said. "We are ready for them." His voice lacked conviction, however, and his face showed the strain of every day of 2,000 years of living.



"Speaking of that," Lenny said. "Reckon I'll go make another circle." He hefted the odd gun over his shoulder and headed for the door.



"Mind if I tag along?" Dad asked.



"Come back if anything happens," Tucker said.



Elita took his vacated seat beside Sully, who instinctively shrank away from her. She stubbed out her cigarette and laughed, a sound at once welcome yet strangely out of place in the solemn room. "I can't believe it comes down to this."



"You don't have to be here," Lizzie said quietly.



Elita allowed herself a quick, wry smile. "This is not about you any longer. It's about me. About choices. About mistaken assumptions I've carried around for a thousand years."



"About love?"



A tiny glimmer of a tear appeared at the corner of her eye, surprising them both. "Yeah, about love." She looked at Tucker until he was uncomfortable and had to look down, then her eyes turned to Lizzie. "Sometimes you have to live with the truth for a long time before you can accept it. I thought love was a game. Now I see that it isn't."



Lenny climbed up the adobe wall and, resting on his elbows, scanned the desert with infrared goggles. The view blacked out and he ripped them away from his face to see a Vampire, one of Lazarus' men, standing in front of him. "They don't work on us," he said simply. "Unless we have recently fed and then they only reveal faint traces. Try these." He offered an elaborate set of binoculars to Lenny. "These are motion sensitive and amplify ambient light. Much more effective."



The landscape they illuminated was silver and surreal. He panned them slowly across the sand and rock until a tiny comet ripped across the viewfinder, trailed by a streak of blue. He sucked his breath in sharply and tensed, but as the comet slowed, it was only a rabbit. Lenny smiled and slithered back down to the ground inside the wall.



Had he continued to watch, he would have seen the rabbit crouch in sudden fear as a pale hand darted out to snatch it back into deeper shadows.



"Nothing moving," he said to Dad. "Maybe they ain't coming after all," he started to say but then froze in midsentence. "Shit, I hear something." From inside the house, muffled barks echoed confirmation and already a distinct thrumming filled the air.



"Choppers," Lenny whispered, then shouted a warning. "Choppers. Choppers."



The war machines flew in fast from behind the mountains, running without lights and blacker even than the night so that the blades were barely discernible, their presence made real only by displacement of the stars. "Hit the lights," Lenny shouted and a dome of light burned away the darkness. The air pulsed with the mechanical throbbing and fifty feet overhead, the sinister bellies of the airships gleamed like giant dragonflies. And then, impossibly, it began to rain Vampires.



They threw themselves from the open cargo doors, howling like lunatics. No ropes or parachutes, just freefalling the distance, laughing all the way. They crashed into the sand with an impact that would have finished a mortal, only to pick themselves up and charge headfirst into the stunned defenders.



"Holy shit," Dad whispered to Lenny. "If that don't beat all."



"Get to Lizzie and Tucker," Lenny said. "I'll cover you."



Already, Lazarus' men had recovered somewhat and the sound of the battle filled the air. Lenny raised up and blasted a wall of stakes in front of Dad who was hightailing it through the courtyard. The high velocity stakes cleared a pathway for him, but more and more Vampires crashed around him. One fell from the sky and landed in his path, instinctively grabbing his ankle. Dad tucked the end of his pistol barrel under the Vampire's chin and blew most of its face away The creature clutched the ragged remains and moaned, leaving Dad free to sprint for safety, as fast as a seventy-year-old man can sprint.



He joined Tucker, who was on the porch and had a shotgun in each hand, dispatching the invaders as quickly as he could reload. Dad leaned on the railing, winded. "Some vacation this has turned out to be," he wheezed.



"You okay?" Tucker asked.



"Hell, no, I ain't okay. It's raining bloodthirsty Vampires and you want to know if I'm okay? Watch out on your left. My only boy is dating the Queen of the undead and you want to know if I'm okay? There's another'n..."



"I'd hate for you to get this far only to die from a heart attack."



"Get the hell out of my way boy. I can still teach you a thing or two." He stomped inside. The dogs made a show of hackles and growls as he entered, but then came with tails drooping to his side, scared and confused. Elita glared savagely at him as he approached Lizzie, who sat pale and quiet on the bed, a stake in her hands.



"Help her," Elita said simply.



"You okay?" Dad asked.



She shook her head slowly. "I don't think I will ever be okay again." She looked at the stake. "I could end this all right now. If I was dead, dead for real, all this would stop."



Dad took the stake from her. "You do that, you'd be dooming a lotta folks to a worse fate. Ol' Julius wouldn't give up. He'd just figure out new ways to do bad things. And do you know what'd happen to my boy if you did that? You'd be killing him too.



You'd be killing hope and that's the one thing everybody needs." He looked at Elita. "And I do mean everybody."



Lizzie shook her head, her long hair swaying. "I should be out there." Elita intervened. "You should be where your chances of survival are greatest. Not only to thwart Julius. There is a nation of my people who have lived for centuries in the shadows. If they ever are to see a new world, it will be up to you." She paused and then added with quiet respect, "Against all odds, you have survived what should have destroyed you."



In the moment of silence that followed, the sounds of battle raged outside. Lizzie peered out the window. "I hope Lazarus knows what he is doing." She looked back at Elita. "It seems I have much to do in the coming eternity, but," she added, "I shall need your help."



Elita smiled faintly.



More and more Vampires fell into the battle, despite the almost constant roar of the miniguns and flash of the defenders' rifles.



From his place on the wall, Lenny could see some of the invaders break away from the engagement to claw their way into the bunkers and the security devices below. "This ain't going our way," he murmured, laying aside the Warthog and unshouldering an M-203. Sighting in on the closest airship, he sent a 40-mm high explosive round streaking into the underside. The explosion shook the compound. Shards of metal rained down and the other choppers, rattled by the shockwave, wobbled off to set down in the desert outside the circle of lights. Lenny, catching Tucker's eyes across the way, gave him a thumbs up. Tucker returned it jubilantly, but his smile turned to horror as a shadowy figure loomed up over the adobe and pulled Lenny out of sight into the darkness beyond. "Lenny," he screamed, wading oblivious through the death around him. He reached the wall unharmed and vaulted up onto it, but there was no sign of Lenny, and he screamed in frustration, sweeping up the gun and spinning to shoot stake after stake into the melee below. Abruptly, all the electronic security devices stopped. The miniguns died. The massive lights went out. The heavy gates swung open. The night was lost.