Back to FLAT EARTH
The St. Valentine's Day Re-Massacre
15.1
Lonesome Road, Rottenburg
Friday February 13th, 2004
8:43 p.m.
With a screeching of tires and the stench of burning rubber, an old and dented van tore its way around the corner into Lonesome Road, with a speed lent by pure soul-wrenching terror. The driver was not a man who normally gave in to fear, but tonight of all nights he couldn't hold back the panic. It was Friday the 13th, the sun had already set, and he didn't have much time left.
He leaned forward over the wheel as he spurred the van down the road at breakneck speed, wild darting eyes scanning the buildings on either side of the road. Finally he saw it, almost tucked away in a doorway - the sign he'd been told to look for. The sign that might yet save him. He planted his foot on the brakes, swerving the van into a near-kamikaze parallel park, then twisted the key and was already scrambling out the door before the engine fell silent.
He took a moment to examine the building looming above him. It was old, probably 1920's, worn old brickwork covered with ivy. The sign creaked slowly in the night breeze, as if beckoning him into the doorway. Yes, this was the place. Here he would find his salvation.
He moved quickly, hurrying towards the door, praying with every fibre of his soul that he would not find it locked. To his everlasting gratitude it opened easily at his touch, drawing him into the warmth of the room behind it.
A young woman stood behind the counter at the far end of the room, short blonde hair and tiny spectacles on her nose, poring over some mysterious tome that lay open in front of her. She looked up as the man hurried in, regarding him with suspicion. Her deep blue eyes twinkled in the half-light of the room, looking the man up and down as he closed the door behind him. Catching his breath, the man nodded a greeting and asked the question - the fateful question, the one that would decide his fate…
"Are you still open?"
The girl nodded. "Yes, sir. We close at nine on Fridays."
The man slumped against the door, the knot in his stomach melting away into a heavy sigh of relief. Thank God for Late-Night Shopping. Moving quickly towards the counter, he announced, "I need to send some flowers to my girlfriend."
The florist smiled knowingly and closed her copy of Girly World, tucking it under the counter. "Leaving things until the last minute, sir?"
The man did a poor job of hiding his embarrassment as he moved to the counter. "Been busy." He passed between rows and rows of bouquets, balloons and gift baskets, feeling a bit out of his depth. He wasn't the only customer in the shop - a petite Asian girl and her six-foot-four Nordic boyfriend were looking at roses in the corner, and a middle-aged man in an overcoat was browsing across the room. A scrawny teenager in an apron was tending the flowers near the door. The man walked quickly towards the counter, trying to ignore them all. He hated this gift-shopping stuff enough as it was without other people watching.
The blonde woman gave him a serene smile as he reached the counter. The gold-painted name tag on her blouse identified her as "BETHANY". "Now - what exactly did we have in mind this evening?"
The man looked around the shop at the virtual jungle of flower arrangements on offer. "What do you suggest?"
"Well," Bethany replied, with the air of a woman more than used to solving the problems of malekind. "In my experience, a gentleman wishing to get his feet under the table can't go wrong with roses. Orchids are a fairly safe bet, too."
The man nodded. "Right, so… roses, then?"
"Or orchids."
"Right."
"Or possibly both."
The man almost smiled. "If I want to cover my arse, you mean?"
"Very elegantly put, sir. Shall we say two dozen of each?"
The man looked surprised. "Two dozen of each? Bit over the top, isn't it?"
Bethany treated him to a kindly smile. "Well, they say size doesn't matter, sir, but let's not delude ourselves."
The man was suitably put off by the inference not to argue. "Fair enough."
"Right," Bethany beamed. "That'll come to three hundred and eighty-seven fif…"
"On the other hand," the man quickly cut in, "they also say that less is more."
Bethany pursed her lips. "That they do, sir. And how much less would we be referring to, precisely?"
"Er… forty bucks?"
Bethany gave curt nod. "Half a dozen very small tulips it is, sir." She efficiently slid a pink and frill-edged card in front of her and whipped a gold pen from her pocket. "And what would you like the card to read?"
"Uh…" the man looked lost. "No idea."
Bethany smiled primly. "Well, let's see what we can conjure up, sir. What's your girlfriend's name?"
"Helena," he replied.
"And yours?"
"Uh, Rip."
Bethany looked over her glasses. "Rip?"
"Yep."
"How very unusual."
"I come from an unusual family."
"No doubt." Bethany returned her attention to the card. "And how long have you been seeing the lovely Helena?"
Rip frowned. "Why?"
Bethany gave a little shrug. "Well, if you've only been courting her for a week, sir, then you probably don't want to be pledging your everlasting devotion just yet. On the other hand, if you've been living with her for five years and she's about to bear your third child, then 'Be Mine' might seem a tad redundant." The primness of the smile increased a notch.
Rip nodded. "Well - she's not really my girlfriend any more…"
"Ah. So we're more in the market for something of the 'Take Me Back, I've Changed' variety?"
"No, no," Rip told her. "I don't want to… well, I might, but… I mean, she's…" He waved a hand. "It's a long story. I'm just sort of sending her flowers because I do it every year. Can you come up with something sort of non-committal?"
Bethany thought hard for a second. "'To Helena, From Rip'?"
Rip smiled. "Bingo."
He watched as Bethany produced the small bouquet and affixed the card, then jotted down Helena's address and accepted the money. "Very good, sir, I'll send them off immediately."
Rip thanked her and started towards the door, greatly relieved.
He was a few steps away from the counter when Bethany called, "Rip… that wouldn't be Rip Van Helzing, perchance?"
Rip stopped and turned around, regarding the florist with the mild suspicion that came with his line of work. "Perchance it would," he replied. "Have we met?"
Bethany smiled and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the whites of her eyeballs had turned an unsightly shade of red. "Let's just say your reputation precedes you, sir." Her lips parted in a wry smile, the light glinting off an elongated canine.
Rip took a slow step back. He sensed movement behind him and turned to see the Asian girl and her boyfriend slowly approaching, eyes fixed on him. The man in the overcoat was moving in from the other side of the shop. All of them had undergone the same ocular transformation as Bethany. The kid in the apron - his skin turning an unhealthy shade of ashen grey - was turning to lock the door and pull the shade down.
Rip assessed the situation and was not pleased with the conclusion. "A flower shop run by vampires? That's new."
"Oh, we're branching out into all sorts of new markets these days, sir," Bethany assured him. "And out of all the flower shops in all the shopping districts in all the world, you had to walk into mine."
"Yeah." Rip opened his coat, revealing a harness hung with stakes, silver-loaded handguns, a crucifix, a small can of spray-on garlic and a dozen phials of holy water. "Funny, that."
Bethany ducked just in time, one of the phials shattering on the wall behind her in a shower of glass and consecrated H2O.
The man in the overcoat was already moving, charging down Rip from the left. He kept on moving - though somewhat more awkwardly - as the re-terminator ducked and caught the running vampire around the legs, propelling him into a body back-drop and demolishing a display of sympathy wreaths. Rip was back on his feet in time to see Bethany jump up onto the counter, her foot catching Helena's flowers and propelling them onto the floor. Rip swept out a leg to knock her feet from under her, sending her tumbling back behind the counter with a yelp.
The kid in the apron rushed across the room, his yellow eyes bulging, his jaw hanging open as if it were dislocated. Rip saw jagged brown teeth, and could smell the stench of carrion even at a distance. Ghoul, he thought. Probably working for minimum wage, too. Reaching under his coat, he flung out his hand to send a six-inch silver shuriken dart spinning across the room. The shuriken caught the ghoul in the forehead and - thanks to the weakened bone structure that was the handicap of all lesser undead - didn't stop until it was halfway out the back of his skull. He flopped onto his back with a pitiful splat, immediately beginning to decompose.
Spinning on his heel, Rip whirled around to face the Asian girl and her boyfriend, a stake in each hand. He was greeted by the disconcerting sight of the couple drawing matching samurai swords and striking elegant fighting poses.
Rip sighed. "Okey-dokey…"
Hurling the stakes to distract the pair (both were quickly deflected by flashing blades) he drew a silver-plated machete from under his coat and raised them just in time to defend himself. The ring of steel on silver echoed around the shop as Rip did his best to fend off the rain of sword-blows from the couple. His job was made considerably more difficult when he sensed the guy in the overcoat rising from the wreckage to lunge at him from behind.
Fortunately the Asian vampiress chose that moment to make a sweeping slash at Rip's neck and, even more fortunately, he ducked. The swinging katana caught the vampire coming up behind him and sent his head spinning through the air even as his body collapsed in a shower of dust. The head hit the wall a second later and disintegrated with a small poof!
The Asian girl barely had time to look embarrassed before Rip rose from his crouch, his machete coming up to slice a diagonal line across her face. She shrieked and stumbled away, clutching at her burning injury and imparting a veritable dictionary of foul language. Her enraged Nordic boyfriend responded with a vicious slash that jarred the machete from Rip's hand, then swung a powerful leg in a kick that sent the re-terminator flying. Sliding across the floor, Rip clambered to his feet to see Bethany sailing through the air towards him. He managed to gain his balance in time for a roundhouse kick that detoured her into a messy collision with the gift baskets.
Then the Nordic vampire was on him again, wielding both his own sword and his girlfriend's. Ducking two potentially distressing slashes, Rip caught the vampire in the guts with an upward knee, snatching one of the swords away in the process. The vampire responded just in time to parry Rip's next blow and wheeled to the attack again. Not having much more success now that he was fighting one sword rather than two, Rip was beginning to feel a bit outclassed. He paused to swing an elbow back into Bethany's face as she rushed him from behind, then returned his attention to the big fellow in front of him. Switching the sword to his left hand, he lashed out as hard as he could and managed to jar the vampire's weapon out of the way long enough to lunge forward with his right. Since his right hand was now holding a stake, this proved to be the vampire's undoing. He spun away from Rip with a howl, his punctured chest already caving in, and hit the floor only to spread across it as a pile of powdery dust.
An ear-splitting scream came from the Asian girl on the other side of the room. Rip thought at first that she was lamenting her fallen boyfriend, but turned to see her clutching at her injured face. "Look what you've done!!!"
Rip shook his head. Vampires were notoriously self-conscious about their appearance - probably because they couldn't see themselves in the mirror - and vampire women were so image-conscious that century-long blood feuds had been known to develop when two of them went to a gathering wearing the same belt. Normally the cut Rip had given her would regenerate before tomorrow night, but coming from a silver weapon meant that it would take weeks to heal up. And she'd have the scar for the rest of her unlife.
So one could argue that when she charged at Rip in a screaming rage, and he hurled a phial of holy water that shattered on her forehead and caused her entire cranium to vanish in a cloud of vapour before the rest of her body melted into a huge puddle of bubbling muck on the floor, he was probably doing her a favour.
Rip almost relaxed, but caught a flash of movement behind him and remembered he wasn't quite done yet. He turned and thrust out his blade just in time to meet Bethany coming the other way. Her crimson eyes bulged as she ran onto the point of the sword, effectively running herself through the chest. Blood surged in her ears as she felt the blade pierce her heart. Her mouth dropped open to emit a shrill and horrifying scream.
Gritting his teeth, Rip gave the sword a businesslike twist.
The scream instantly stopped, taken over by a rasping gurgle. Bethany stood rigid in front of the re-terminator, still skewered on the katana like a snooty kebab, her skin turning an unhealthy shade of purple. Her eyes started to bulge out of her face in a cartoonesque manner, her skin suddenly criss-crossed by protruding veins.
Rip recognised the signs, yanked the sword free and started to move. Bethany stood rooted to the spot, veins bulging to bursting point, one trembling clawed hand oustretched at her fleeing opponent. Ducking to snatch Helena's flowers from the floor, Rip sprinted through the wreckage of the shop and threw himself shoulder-first at the door. It was almost torn off its hinges as he crashed through it, rolling across the pavement outside.
He made it clear of the door just before Bethany exploded. A deafening bang echoed down the street as the walls, ceiling, floor and contents of the shop were sprayed with thick, chunky vampire goo, flying shards of bone biting into the walls like shrapnel. The front window of the shop was blown outwards by the blast, broken glass spraying halfway across the street.
The exploding ones were a real pain in the butt.
As is often the case when a florist is blown to bits by a vampiric chemical reaction in her blood, an uncomfortable silence followed, as if the Universe wasn't quite sure what to follow it up with. Eventually there was movement to be seen as Rip Van Helzing rose slowly out of the gutter, carefully shaking off the tiny shards of glass that covered him. Brushing a few splinters out of his hair, he gave the runny crimson mess of the shattered flower shop a perfunctory glance. How come every time I go into a shop these days, I end up battling vampires? he wondered as he shuffled stiffly back towards his van. Maybe I should do all my shopping at the supermarket from now on…
As he went, he raised the bouquet of flowers to assess any damage. The paper they were wrapped in was splattered with blood, the card smeared and torn, but the actual flowers themselves seemed relatively unscathed. A glint of gold caught his eye, and among the shower of broken glass on the pavement he caught sight of Bethany's gold pen.
Stooping to pick it up, he wiped it off and scrawled a brief "p.s." at the bottom of the card. Then he carefully placed the flowers on the passenger seat and climbed into the van, dialling his cellphone to call an overnight courier service.
As the van pulled out from the curb and drove slowly away down the street, it was closely watched from the shadows above by a pair of glittering red eyes.
"Sooner or later," a cold and ancient voice mused, "we're going to have to have a word with that boy…"
Then the eyes moved on, looking for easier prey.
Back to FLAT EARTH