“Are you certain about this?” Holly asked, peering through the windshield at the balefully glowing Wal-Mart sign.
I shrugged. “Well, it’s not like we have a better idea. Brent works here. After this, we’ll head home.”
“I think I want to head home right now,” she said, but got out of the car.
I followed her, taking a quick look around the parking lot. It was mostly empty, of course. After all, at midnight on a Friday, most people were either leaving the movie theater or sitting down to watch something, not doing their grocery shopping. Even the Pizza Hut at the far end of the parking lot was dead quiet.
I turned back to the Wal-Mart and then, something tickling the back of my mind, I looked again at the Pizza Hut. At the far corner, I thought I saw two shapes huddled behind a nearby car. “Hold on,” I told Holly, walking slowly towards them. It couldn’t possibly be… Could it? After about ten feet, I was able to make out a few details of the two people.
I motioned Holly closer. “It’s them all right,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Brent and Dan.”
“Dan?” Holly asked, a little confused. “You mean the vampire hunter?”
“Yeah, that nut-job.”
“Is he going to hurt him?”
I shook my head. “He’s harmless for the most part, as long as he’s not getting jumpy with his gun.”
“So should we wait for him to give up?”
“No,” I said. “Shit. We should probably just grab Brent and not look back.”
I couldn’t believe it. Somehow, Brent had gotten himself dragged out here in the middle of the night by a crazed lunatic. Maybe he really was cursed?
I walked up to them, Holly following silently behind. I was five feet away, and they still hadn’t noticed me. I stood there, waiting for Dan’s vampire hunting instincts to alert him, but they apparently hadn’t kicked in yet. I cleared my throat as loudly as possible.
The two jumped almost a foot off the ground and Brent made a sound that befitted a middle school girl. He probably wet his pants right then. Dan’s feet hit the ground and he spun on his heels, wrenching his gun out and pointing it at me. His eyes darted between me and Holly, who yelped when she saw what he was holding. Finally, he focused on her, his gun wavering a bit.
I grabbed Holly’s hand and pulled her behind me, stepping in front of the gun. “She’s with me,” I explained.
Dan relaxed a little, only a little. “Maybe she is, and maybe she isn’t.” His eyes narrowed. “They’re making their move tonight. They put blood in your pizza, to make you into zombies. Did you eat the pizza? Tell me you didn’t eat the pizza! Well? Did you?”
I frowned at him. “There was no blood in the pizza.”
“Yes there was!” Dan said angrily. “I tracked it. I had to take him with me! To keep him from turning into a zombie! And now you’re turning into a zombie, too!”
“I’m not… Brent!” I said, exasperated.
“I… uh…” Brent stuttered out. Dan whirled on him, training the gun at his face. He went even paler, but then swallowed and talked even though his voice cracked. “Yeah. There wasn’t any blood on the pizza. I…. Remember? I had half a slice and I don’t look possessed, do I?”
Dan wavered a little. “They don’t actually possess you,” he said, chewing on his lip. “But I guess you do have a point.” Then he spun back on Holly, training the gun on her. Or trying to, at least, since I put myself between them. “But what about her!”
“What about her?” I asked pointedly.
Then I felt Holly pry my hand off her wrist, making liberal use of her fingernails. She stepped around me to meet Dan gaze to gaze. She didn’t even flinch at the barrel of the gun a few inches from her face. “Hi,” she said forcefully. “I’m Holly.”
Dan frowned at her for a moment, then immediately stared directly at her breasts for a good fifteen seconds. Christ! I thought, that’s a way to make a good first impression. Holly flushed about five shades of red. She’s going to kill him. That prospect gave me a certain level of satisfaction.
His head whipped back up right when I thought she was about to slap him. “She’s alive. I could see her breathing,” he said to me, then turned back to her. “Guy van Hellsing,” he said simply. “Where did you find her?”
“She’s a friend.” I gave an exasperated sigh when he didn’t lower his gun. “I’ve known her for months now. Look, she’s fine.”
Dan wavered a little. “That doesn’t mean anything. They could have planted bugs weeks ago. They can do that, you know.”
“I’m sure they can,” I said. “But I doubt they did it to her.”
“How would you know!?” Dan demanded.
I met him eye to crazed, bulging eye. “Look, we aren’t vampires. We’ve never seen any vampires, and we sure as hell wouldn’t be targeted by them! Holly works at an ice-cream shop! I enter gift order information after hours and Brent here stocks the toilet cleaners at Wal-Mart! What the hell could vampires possibly want with us?”
Dan looked back down at his feet. “They’ve got Pizza Hut! Now they’re trying to take over Wal-Mart! And to do that, they’re taking over the people who work there, one at a time! It’s true!” He looked from my face, to Holly’s, to Brent’s. “Fine,” he said heatedly, re-holstering his gun. “I’ll prove it to you.” And with that, he started walking towards Pizza Hut.
Bloody hell! “Hey!” I almost shouted, then forced my voice low again. I didn’t exactly want to get caught out here. “Dan, wait!”
He stopped and turned around, stomping his foot. “That’s not my name!” he said angrily. “I told you, my name’s Guy van Hellsing!”
“Fine, fine,” I said, walking up to him. “But just what were you planning to do? Break into Pizza Hut to show me the blood?”
“No,” Dan said, “someplace much easier.” He took a few steps to reach the dumpster and then hoisted himself up to begin digging through it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said with a shake of my head. I headed back to where Brent and Holly watched. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“But what about Hellsing?” Brent asked, a little shaken.
“What about him?”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here.”
I looked at Brent like he was crazy. “Why not? He wants to dig through someone else’s garbage and get himself arrested, why shouldn’t he?”
“But what if he comes looking for us?” Brent said. “Do you really want to deal with him when he comes back accusing us of being on their side? Besides,” he indicated Dan with a nod of his head, “don’t you feel sorry for the poor bastard?”
I took a long look at our self-proclaimed vampire hunter. He had managed to pry open their dumpster and was half-in and half-out, constantly looking over his shoulder at us to make sure we were still there. I guess he didn’t want us to leave before he had proven himself.
Was he even worth bothering with? We could go over there and drag him back down; but he’d just be back next week, knocking on our door. It seemed liked the best thing to do was to just let him get arrested. At least then he’d get to see a psychiatrist.
“Guy!” Holly called softly.
Dan looked back at her at the sound of his fictional name.
“We believe you,” she said. “Now come on down.”
He looked back at her suspiciously, than finally pulled himself free of the dumpster and dropped back down to the parking lot. “It’s in there!” he said fervently, still holding a dripping bag of garbage.
“I doubt that,” Holly answered. “Do you really think they’d be dumb enough to leave evidence in their garbage?”
Dan looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“They’re vampires, right?” she explained. “Surely they’d be more thorough than that. I mean, they’ve been doing this for how many centuries?”
He considered this. “Then we’d have to go inside…”
Holly shook her head. “They want you to do that, don’t you see? Their security cameras are just waiting for you. You break in there, and the vampires’ll have you in their clutches before you know it.”
Dan shook his head, but he had a doubtful expression on his face. “They couldn’t catch me.”
“Can you really be so sure?” Holly asked. “And what makes you think there’s still any evidence in there?”
He glanced over at the Pizza Hut. “It was there last night…”
“But why would it be there now?” she pressed. “They were doing their final moves tonight, right? Then aren’t they done? Wouldn’t they have cleaned out and left? It’s an empty trap,” she said softly. “Don’t you see?”
Dan suddenly looked worried. “But they couldn’t possibly do that! They’re not that fast!”
“They’re vampires, remember? Why couldn’t they?”
Dan looked at her, a shattered expression on his face. Then suddenly he swore and tossed the bag across the parking lot, splattering Holly with whatever was inside. To her credit, she didn’t flinch.
“Dammit!” he said angrily, sounding near tears. “God dammit! How could I have been so stupid!” He turned away from us.
“Do you want a ride home or something,” Holly called from behind.
“No,” Dan answered harshly. Then he stalked off into the darkness.
“Well,” Holly said as we walked up, wiping some kind of gunk from her face. “That was easy.” She looked back at me, plainly disgusted. “Can I take a shower at your place?”
“Sure,” I said, “but you’ll have to sit in the trunk.”
“Ha ha,” Holly answered in a voice that dared me to try it.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, Brent looked back at the shadows Dan had disappeared into. “Do you think… do you think that’s the last of Hellsing we’ll see?”
“Maybe,” I answered. “Maybe he’ll travel on to some other city, nobly following his dream of wiping out the vampires. Maybe that is his fate, to forever journey from one place to another.”
“You think?” Brent asked seriously.
“Of course not,” I said. “Two weeks from now, he’ll be knocking on your door, trying to get you to help him break into Wal-Mart.”
Brent was silent for the rest of the ride home.
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