Tale of the Dead Town (20 page)

“Mr. Clements, we don’t want any trouble here . . . ” the bartender called out fretfully
from behind the counter as he loaded glasses onto a tray.

“Go out back for a while, Jatko,” the giant said in a weighty tone. There was a little
gray mixed in his hair, but he looked like he could strangle a bear even without his
combat suit. “Tally up yesterday’s take or something. We’ll pay you for anything that
gets broken. Nan, you’d best run along, too. You start getting friendly with these
drifter types, and you’re not gonna be too popular around town.”

“I can talk to whomever I please,” Nan retorted, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“Well, we’ll discuss that matter later. Move it!” Clements tossed his jaw in Nan’s
direction, and a man to his left went into action. An arm empowered with hundreds
of times its normal strength grabbed Nan by the shoulder.

Suddenly, her captor’s face warped in pain. Oddly enough, neither the men there nor
even Nan had noticed until now that D had stood up.

A black glove held the wrist of the man’s combat suit. The man’s body shook, but D
didn’t move in the slightest. It looked like his hand was just gently resting on the
other man. But what was gentle for this young man was cause for others to shudder.

The Hunter moved his hand easily, and the arm of the combat suit went along with it
as it limned a semicircle. “This young lady came in here with me,” the Hunter said.
“It would be best if she leaves with me, too.” And then D calmly brought his hand
down, and the sound of bones snapping echoed through the quiet bar.

Clements looked scornfully at his lackey, who’d fainted dead away from the pain. “Beat
by a damn Hunter. That really makes me sick,” he spat, gazing at D. “Stanley Clements
is the name—I head up the local Vigilance Committee and breed guard beasts. I’m a
big deal in these parts, if I do say so myself. You remember that when you tangle
with me.”

D was silent.

Perhaps mistaking silence for fright, Clements continued. “We hear tell you killed
Tokoff. For a lousy drifter, you’ve got a lot of nerve laying a hand on a clean-living
villager,” Clements said, his voice brimming with confidence.

“That’s not how it was, Mr. Clements. I saw the whole thing. And Bates agreed, too.
He’s not the one who shot that arrow, I tell you!”

Ignoring Nan’s desperate explanation, Clements sneered, “I don’t know what the hell
that deputy told you, but you’re gonna leave town quick. After we have a little fun
with you, that is.”

It seemed Nan had a good deal more courage than the average person. The girl reprovingly
interjected the comment, “Orders from Mr. Bates are as good as orders from the sheriff.
You know, you’re all gonna catch hell when he gets back.”

“Shut your hole, you little brat!” Clements barked as rage gave a vermilion tinge
to his already demonic visage. “Go ahead and take ’im!”

With that command, three men in combat suits charged at D. They didn’t give the slightest
consideration to the fact that he had Nan with him.

No sooner had D pushed the girl away than he was swallowed by a wave of orange armor.
Nan’s eyes were open as wide as they could go. Look at that. Didn’t all three Vigilance
Committee members just sail through the air and slam against the floor with an enormous
crash? Weren’t they supposed to have the strength of five hundred men in that armor?

If by some chance there’d been a super-high-speed camera there to film this scene,
it would’ve caught D as he slipped between the jumbled forms of the trio and twisted
their wrists behind their backs with secret skill. The wrist and shoulder joints of
every last man were shattered beyond repair. Of course, even a dhampir was no match
for the strength of a combat suit. In addition to the ancient technique he used to
turn his opponents’ strength and speed against themselves, he must’ve called on all
his inhuman strength. But executing those moves with absolute perfection was something
this young man alone could’ve done.

“Well, ain’t that something,” Clements groaned, growing pale as he did so. But he
hadn’t yet lost the will to fight. He still had two lackeys left. Slowly, they inched
forward.

It was then that a composed voice declared, “That’ll be enough of that.”

“Sheriff!” Nan shouted with delight. The men in orange stopped what they were doing
and closed their eyes. The fight that’d burned in them like a madness left like a
dream.

“Who started this, Nan?” asked the tall shadow standing in front of the doors.

“Mr. Clements.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Krutz,” the giant growled, vehemently refuting the charge
as he turned to the lawman. “You gonna believe this little bitch? I swear to hell,
I’ve been true to my word to you.”

“In that case, I want you to resign as head of the vigilance committee right this
minute,” the man in the topcoat said. The silver star on his chest reflected Clements’
anger-twisted features.

“C’mon, Krutz, I was just—”

“Take your men and clear out of here. You should thank him for throwing your boys
so neatly. Today you get off without paying any damages.”

Hesitating a bit, the giant started to walk out with his head hung low. The other
two men followed closely behind him, with their four injured cohorts leaning on their
shoulders for support. They banged out through the doors without a parting remark.

“Welcome back, Sheriff,” Nan said, joy and trust suffusing her countenance as she
greeted him. “You take care of that case already?”

“No. Truth is, I was just on my way home now. Have a little work in the fields that
needs doing, you know.” The sheriff’s stern visage smiled wryly, and then he nodded
to D. “Just glad I was able to keep this acquaintance of yours out of trouble.” To
the Hunter, he added, “Though there could’ve been a hundred of them up against you
and they still wouldn’t have had a chance.”

The first time D had seen this man, he probably hadn’t realized the other man’s position,
as Krutz hadn’t been wearing his badge then. His face—placid, yet imbued with strength
and iron will—belonged to the man the Hunter had passed in the hall back at the hospital.

With a polite tip of the head to D, he said, “I heard about the situation from Bates.
Though I need you to stick around for a while, I’d like you to keep out of trouble
if you can. I’ll put the word out, but every village has a couple of characters who
like to beat up folks on the sly.” And then, his magnificent facade broke a little
as he added, “Of course, any cuss stupid enough to go after you won’t live long enough
to regret it.”

Nan was watching D as if waiting for some favorable reply, but the Hunter was as emotionless
as ever when he stated, “I have no business here in town. I’ll thank you to be fast
about confirming my identity.”

“Already done,” Sheriff Krutz said, as he watched D with a calm gaze. “You can’t very
well live on the Frontier without knowing the name of Vampire Hunter D. I’ve met folks
you helped before. What do you suppose they had to say about you?”

The black shadow slipped between the sheriff and the girl without a sound. “I’ll be
in the hotel.” That was all they heard him say through the batwing doors that swayed
closed behind him.

“Wait,” the sheriff said, his gnarled fingers catching hold of Nan’s shoulder as she
was about to go after the Hunter.

“But I have to talk to him. It’s about my dreams.”

“You think talking’s gonna solve all this?”

Nan suddenly let her shoulders drop. Her obsessive gaze stayed trained on what lay
beyond the door. The sunlight swayed languidly. It was afternoon light.

“You keep away from him, understand me?” Nan heard the sheriff say, though he sounded
miles away. “That’s one dangerous man. Getting close to him won’t bring you nothing
but misery . . . Particularly if you’re a woman.”

“You said you’d met people he’d helped, didn’t you?” Nan said absentmindedly. “What
did they have to say about him?”

The sheriff shook his head. It was ominously slow as it moved from side to side. “Not
a thing. They’d all just keep quiet and stare out the door or down the road. That
must’ve been the way he’d gone when he left. And it’ll be the same when he leaves
our village, too.”

“When he leaves here . . . ” Nan’s eyes were dyed the same color as the sunlight.

The sheriff pondered the next thing she said for quite a while after that, but in
the end he still didn’t understand what she meant.

“Before he could leave, he had to come,” Nan said. “Had to come here, to this village.”

-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama
University and wrote his first novel
Demon City Shinjuku
in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels,
and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental
horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.
As of 2004, there were seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter
D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based
on Kikuchi’s novels.

-

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime
artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part
in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including
Gatchaman
(released in the U.S. as
G-Force
and
Battle of the Planets
). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous
writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies.
Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including
DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel
Sandman: The Dream Hunters
with Neil Gaiman and
Elektra
and
Wolverine: The Redeemer
with best-selling author Greg Rucka.