The Triumph of Death (2 page)

Vampires,
Alex thought.

What do you have?

Alex looked at Hansen’s go package, hanging where the agent had left it. For a moment he stole a glance back at the crumpled form of Hansen. In the go package, there would be all kinds of small weapons—a stake or two, some glass holy water grenades, and probably a gun. The gun would be useless on the plane, thought Alex, and anyway he had never used one. His own package—in the overhead compartment—never had a gun. But it would have something else good for close quarters, and he hoped Hansen’s package would as well.

Alex jumped for the go package and grabbed it, crouching against the bulkhead. In an instant he was scrounging through the bag and found what he was looking for—an eighteen-inch, narrow, crossbow-like weapon, completely encased in heavy composite plastic and loaded with a cartridge of silver-threaded hawthorn wood bolts. A Polibow.

Alex heard a gasp farther back, in the galley, and looked beyond Hansen’s body. The vampire dressed as the pilot had not killed the steward after all—he was hauling him forward, his arm wrapped around the steward’s neck and shoulders.

“You!” the vampire in the pilot uniform called, pointing at Alex. The steward came under his own power, his legs moving rapidly to keep up with the muscular vampire.

Alex didn’t waste any time with the Polibow. He reached in and grabbed a glass grenade, feeling the slosh of holy water inside, and threw it. The glass ball landed perfectly, with a heavy crunch, smacking the vampire on the head. It knocked his cap off as water flew in tinkles of glass, making the vampire’s flesh sizzle. The vampire bared his teeth, but he didn’t drop the steward.

“No, no.” The vampire shook his head. His hair was sizzling, his flesh seeming to boil for a moment. He stuck a claw to the steward’s neck, a long thumbnail digging in just below the crook of the thin man’s jaw. The steward’s eyes widened with terror behind his glasses. “We regret that there has been some turbulence, but if you’ll just comply with the requests of the flight personnel you should soon be on your way.” The pilot had an accent. Central American, Alex guessed, so that all his
you
s and
your
s came out
ju
and
jorr
.

Alex’s static was roaring in his mind, and he realized the other vampire in the cockpit could be on him in a second, so he slammed back against the wall, his hand on the go package. He could reach for the Polibow. Could he hit the vampire and not the steward? Would the bolt hit faster than the vampire could move out of the way, or tear out the steward’s throat?

“What do you want?” Alex asked.

“That’s the spirit,” the vampire said, flicking his head toward the computer in the bulkhead. “I need you to remove that tablet computer.”

Alex moved a few inches along the wall until he was across from his seat and the bulkhead, so he could see the screen. It was still displaying the spinning image of the stikini.

The computer was a Polidorium tablet set into a wall cradle; it would pop in and out as needed. Except that Alex had no idea how to pop the tablet out.

“It’s a terminal, a practice computer. It doesn’t have anything on it,” Alex said.

“Are you planning on just making things up or are you going to remove it for me?” the vampire growled, drawing a speck of blood from the steward’s neck.

Alex had no idea what was on the computer. As far as
he was concerned it contained nothing but the training program. But it didn’t matter now anyway.

“Okay.” He edged toward the computer and stared at it.

“Hurry!” hissed the vampire.

“Okay!”

Alex studied the screen, which was embedded in a plastic frame in the bulkhead. He saw no obvious levers or buttons for dislodging it. “I may need a knife.”

“You will
not
need a knife, I know that much,” the vampire answered.

“If you know so much, why don’t you get it?”

“Please!” the steward cried.

“Okay,” Alex snapped. He tapped at the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. The words
END SESSION?
appeared.
YES NO.

Yes.

“Ticktock!”

The steward howled again as the vampire dragged him forward so that Alex could see the thin trickle of blood trailing down his neck.

Alex turned back to the screen. The smell of bananas suddenly came to his nose, drifting strangely in and away. A bizarre, momentary olfactory hallucination. Stress and hunger. Alex shook his head to refocus.

A menu system appeared before him below the Polidorium logo.

He saw a button.
EJECT DEVICE
.

Alex tapped the button and the device popped forward and out, the ten-inch Plexiglas tablet going dark as it came away from its cradle in the wall. He caught it and stood, turning to the vampire and the steward.

The steward looked glassy-eyed and afraid.

The banana smell came to Alex again.

“Give it here!” the vampire demanded, holding out his free hand. “Bjurman! We can go!”

The second vampire emerged instantly from the cockpit.

Alex felt his eyes tracking the trickle of the steward’s blood. It was blackish and strange, and the smell of bananas was stronger.

Alex still held the device and looked at the steward. “So where are you from?”

“Please…”

They were wearing pilots’ uniforms. Alex had seen the pilots when he’d boarded, and though he hadn’t gotten a good look at them, they hadn’t been vampires then. So they had stolen the uniforms and taken the pilots’ places during the layover. But they needed someone to hold hostage aboard a plane of agents. Even a steward
couldn’t be trusted to be compliant.

“What’s your name?” Alex asked the steward.

“Give me the device!” ordered the pilot.

“I…,” said the steward.

Bananas. That meant something. Then he thought,
Filipino.
A Filipino illusion, and a very unusual one.

“What’s two plus two?”

“Please…”

“You can’t
do
math, can you? Just a couple lines of dialogue, that’s all you can handle.” Alex drew the Polibow from his belt and pointed it at all of them, backing toward the bulkhead. “Get back in the cockpit and fly the plane.”

“Hand it over,” said the vampire, “or this man dies.”

“I don’t think so.” Alex fired the Polibow.

The Aswang vampires of the Philippines could replace people with simple doppelgangers. These doppelgangers were zombie-like in nature and didn’t last long.

And they were made of banana leaves.

Of course an Aswang didn’t
look
like banana leaves—the glamour that transformed them smoothed over the vegetable matter and gave them the appearance of normal, if sallow, human beings. But there was no disguising the smell and the beginnings of rot.

The bolt struck the steward in the chest and the steward’s eyes burst like banana-filled tomatoes, his body disintegrating into leaves and sweet-smelling mush. Alex fired at the pilot vampire as the steward fell apart, but the vampire pushed the falling mass toward Alex. Alex missed.

The copilot yanked on the emergency exit—something Alex wasn’t expecting—and suddenly wind and papers and the last vestiges of the banana leaf man were flying out the door. Alex drew his Polibow again and the vampire smacked him across the face, sending him flying back.

Alex could now barely hear over the roar of wind. He watched Gunnar Hansen’s body lift with the sudden bucking of the plane and smash to the floor.

Alex felt the plane begin to pitch slightly and then steady, fighting to stay on course. Obviously the autopilot was functioning, or else the plane would surely be diving toward the earth. But as the plane jolted, the tablet computer slipped from his hand, bouncing off the bulkhead near the vampire. About thirty oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.

As Alex steadied himself against a seat, he saw the pilot had already picked up the computer and attached it to a cord that ran to an iPod-like device on his belt. The
pilot vampire studied the connection between the two devices for a second, watching a few lights blinking on his own device. Then, as the blinking slowed, he nodded and tossed the Polidorium tablet aside. “Okay.”

The copilot nodded in agreement, removing his jacket to reveal a parachute attached to his shoulders. He snapped the clasps across his chest and disappeared through the door without another signal.

“
Gracias, amigo!
” called the pilot, and he bounded past Alex in a blur. The vampire stopped at the door, looking back. “I’ve heard you are always prepared. I’ll bet you weren’t prepared for this!” With that, the vampire leapt out the door.

Alex ran after the vampire and stopped, holding on. He paused for a moment and stared across the entire plane.

Just him and the late Hansen, who absolutely had not expected his last act to be that of searching for a granola bar.

Could he fly the plane?

You can’t fly a plane.

And then something in the cockpit burst with orange and red, and Alex saw flames rising with the smell of burning plastic and black smoke.

Okay. Okay, now you’re in trouble.

Chest flooding. That’s panic. Ask the questions.

In microseconds, questions shot across Alex’s mind like ricocheting bullets.

What’s going on?

I’m alone at 30,000 feet. The cockpit has been destroyed. The door is open.

What do you need to get down?

A parachute.

Do you have one?

No.

Is there one nearby?

Alex saw a small door clasped shut near the cockpit. He tore it open, hoping to find a parachute. No such luck.

Who has one?

No time. The smell of smoke was getting thicker. He looked around for something to protect his eyes from the wind and saw his motorcycle helmet rolling against the bulkhead. He slapped it on his head and slipped his arms through the straps of the go package. He was out of time.

He drew near to the door, looked out, took a deep breath, and leapt.

Alex flipped once in the wind, totally losing control. For a moment he was thankful that he could barely see
the ground—just a distant line of tiny lights dotting the landscape like LEDs on a model train set. He could see a train, in fact, far below, a long stream of bright yellow lights pulsing out of the sides of the cars.

He spotted the first vampire farther below, finally, his parachute shimmering in the darkness, barely visible—a brilliant red vinyl canopy.

This is crazy. You’re going to die
shot through his head and he shut it down.
Breathe. This is your only chance.

He was falling. Without a parachute. He scanned the air some more,
Find it find it,
and spotted the second vampire. Both seemed about a quarter mile or more away, not far from one another.
I pick that one.
Alex tilted forward, bringing his arms close to his sides, and began to dive.

The wind smashed against his Plexiglas wind visor and roared, rolling the skin of his face back toward his ears. The vampire he’d chosen seemed to be banking a little, slower than the other, and Alex aimed for him.

Within a hundred yards Alex began to worry. If he struck the parachute he would wrap himself up and fall to the earth in a cloth cocoon. If he struck the vampire’s body with his head, he was pretty sure his neck would break.

He thought about flipping again and striking the
vampire with his feet, but for a grisly millisecond he pictured hitting the vampire with such force, all located in his heels, that he would sail clear through the creature’s body and plummet toward the earth, torn to shreds by its jagged ribs as he passed through.

Hug the vampire, body to body. That had to be the way.

Alex had the vampire’s body in sight and prepared to strike. When he could see his face and shining eyes, Alex extended his arms wide, as if he were about to hug a tree.

The vampire looked up in shock just as Alex came rolling in at full speed. Suddenly Alex’s vision went out completely. Static roared in his brain like a lion, and for a moment it was as though he could see systems clicking on, sparks of electricity in his blacked-out vision kicking him awake once more. Alex heard the parachute lurch loudly as the vampire grunted.

His vision returned and he found himself hugging the vampire chest to chest. He grabbed on to the straps, and they began to spin.

The vampire moved quickly from shocked to confused to enraged.
“Dudo! Idiot!”
he heard the vampire cry as they spun, the parachute tilting this way and that as they swung. The vampire reared back his head and
then lunged his teeth for Alex. He felt the press of fangs against the turtleneck and heard the sizzle of flesh and saliva against the silver lining. The pressure smarted, though, and Alex angrily butted the vampire in the head with his helmet. “Stop that!”

“This is my parachute!” the vampire yelled, though Alex could barely hear him over the sound of the wind and through the plastic visor. There was something insane and almost merry in his sparkling eyes.

“I’m joining you, and we can fight when we hit the ground!” Alex yelled.

“No,” the vampire shouted. “It’s too much weight! Which one of us do you think will survive hitting the ground, eh?”

Alex looked down to see a grassy field, barely visible in the moonlight. Even with the parachute, the ground was coming up fast. He understood now. The parachute had been prepared for just the vampire, who probably weighed less than Alex did, even with his muscular frame. Vampires were cat-like, fast and light.

The vampire tried to kick him away, and Alex held on, smashing him in the nose briefly before yanking back from the teeth once more.

They were hurtling toward the ground now. He judged he had another hundred yards to go. Alex loosed
one of his hands and reached back to his go package.

“So we die together, no?” The vampire had an insane look in his eye.