Vampire Guts In Nuke Town Chapter 2

Vampire Guts in Nuketown was originally published in 2013. It is available to purchase in full via Kindle or paperback by clicking here. Before reading this chapter, catch up with chapter 0, and chapter 1

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Chapter 2

As Guts was tending to Nick, Shelly had quietly gathered up a shotgun from under the tarp.

As he hit the ground face first, Guts thought to himself: This is the kind of shit that’s gonna get you killed, brother. Let your guard down for a piece of ass, and look what happens.

Out loud, as an afterthought, he said, “Great actress.” He spat out several teeth, feeling sick to his stomach as the warm, dull pain grew in intensity across his face. Then he mumbled, “Bitch broke my jaw.”

“What’d you say, you fucking scumbag?!” Nick leaped off the bed, snatched the shotgun out of Shelly’s hand, and pointed the business end in Guts’ face.

Guts peered at him through watery eyes, his right one already swelling shut from the blow. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the kid. His wiry form was tensed with adrenaline, veins bulging in his small arms and chest.

“That’s what I thought, you’d better shut the fuck up.” He turned toward Shelly. “What’d this cocksucker do to ya, sis?”

That’s when Guts noticed his second mouth, set in his long, thin neck. A perfectly shaped mouth complete with lips and teeth. It moved in tandem with the one on his face, but made no sound. Nick was a mutant.

“Nothing, Nicky. Honest, he just said he’d help us.” There was fear and apprehension in her voice. She met Guts’ gaze for a split second, her eyes showed remorse. She was a reluctant accomplice in this scheme.

“Yeah right!” Nick hauled off and planted a boot deep into Guts’ ribs, breaking at least one. This action revealed another identical mouth on the opposite side of his neck. He turned back to Shelly.

“He probly fucked you over there. You were gone too long, Shelly! He fucked you, didn’t he!?”

“Nicky, no!”

Guts had seen the bait and switch tactic before. Scavengers and motorcycle gangs on the road liked to put wounded animals and children in harm’s way, waiting for some shit-for-brains to come to the rescue. Guts sure felt like he had shit for brains right then. His vision swam, his jaw was on fire, he could barely breathe through cracked ribs, and the damn throbbing in the back of his neck had somehow become worse.

“You think you can just fuck my sister and get away with it, you piece of shit?!” He kicked Guts again. “Huh, loser? Huh?”

Guts rolled into the fetal position, clutching his broken ribs.

Nick grabbed his sister by the pants, unfastening her buckle. Absently, he let the shotgun drop to the floor.

“Nicky, stop. Not now.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Nick violently yanked Shelly’s pants down around her hips. The young girl went limp. She’d obviously been through this before, and knew better than to fight back. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Nick buried his nose into her pussy, breathing deeply.

“I don’t smell your cock in my sister. Good. The only person who gets the honor of fucking this little piece of ass is me! Got it, punk?”

Nick moved behind his sister. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tiny top up over her perky little tits. He massaged them gently in his hands while the tongue on the left side of his neck licked at her cheek, smearing thick white saliva across her face.

She closed her eyes and trembled. Out of fear or lust, Guts couldn’t be certain.

In spite of the tremendous pain he was in, Guts felt his cock begin to stir.

“Unbelievable,” he mumbled, as disgusted with his own perverse excitement as the incestuous scene before him.

Shelly began to moan as her brother turned her around and started sucking on her perky nipples with his main mouth.

“Oh, Nicky. You make me so wet.”

These people are insane, Guts thought. You have got to get up and get the fuck outta here! He made a move to unsheathe the knife from his boot.

In a flash, Nick jerked away from his sister. He stomped Guts’ hand just as it reached the knife handle. New pain surged up Guts’ arm. He again saw blinding flashes of light behind his closed eyes.

“Don’t even think about it, cock suck! Little bitch!” Nick pulled the knife free from its sheathe. “Ho-ly shit! This is a real pig sticker, ain’t it?”

Shelly shifted uncomfortably, pulling her top back down. “C’mon, Nicky, let’s get outta here. I’m hungry. I saw a big bag of food in his room.”

“Not so fast, baby. It might be a week before we run into somebody again. I tell ya, sometimes I think we’re about the last normal people out here on the road. I wanna play with this one for a bit.” Nick pulled the tarp away, revealing a table stacked with all manner of tubes and containers.

That’s when the smell hit Guts. He glanced over and saw the bodies. The tarp wasn’t there to cover a hole in the wall; it was covering the bodies of dead Pogs. This psycho was cooking Pog blood. But for what purpose? Guts should have known. How could he have been so careless? So stupid?

The Pogs outside, they weren’t attacking him. They were warning him that there were Poogers in the other hotel room. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now he noticed the telltale purple bags under these two lunatics’ eyes; the way they scratched at their arms and twitched, always nervous. They were Poog junkies.

Using the knife, Nick cut away a long strip of tarp. When he crossed back over toward the bed, Guts was met with another boot to the face, sealing the deal on that broken jaw.

Shelly looked on in disapproval as her brother tied Guts’ hands behind his back. Guts remained as quiet as possible, while unbelievable pain crisscrossed along his body. Nick’s right throat-mouth was right by Guts’ face. It breathed deeply. Its noxious breath, like spoiled meat, washed across his face. Guts held his breath, accepting the pain in his ribs over breathing that rancid breath. How could Shelly stand kissing him?

“I don’t know about this, Nicky. He’s real big. Let’s just go, OK?”

Nick whipped a sharp glare in his sister’s direction. “You never let me have any damn fun, baby!”

“No. It’s just… I don’t want him to get loose and hurt us, is all.” Shelly put a hand to her brother’s face.

He violently slapped it away. “Fuck that!”

Shelly flinched away.

“You love him, don’t you?!”

She took a step back, seemingly sensing what was to come next. “What? Nicky, no! I love you! Don’t say that!”

“You fucking slut.” Nick stood and turned away from Guts. “You fucked him, didn’t you??” He dropped the knife inches from Guts’ left boot. It stuck straight up in the thick carpeted floor.

Guts stayed perfectly still. He willed himself invisible. He held his breath again, in spite of the pain.

Nick slowly stalked toward Shelly, violent intentions across his crazed face, twin throat-tongues darting in and out of their grotesque orifices in anticipation.

“Nicky, please, don’t talk like that. I-“

Nick backhanded his sister. Hard. “Bitch!” His hands began to shake. His eyes grew wide with the type of rage that only manifests itself as pure insanity.

Shelly shrank back against the far wall, a look of mute horror across her face. A trickle of blood dripped from the corner of her open mouth. Slowly, her hand went up to the red mark across her cheek.

“You promised no more hitting, Nick.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

Nick stared at her for a moment, his anger simmering, threatening to burst forth into another violent act, his tongues whipping in and out of his mouths. Then he turned his back to her. He walked up to the table full of jugs and tubes. He stepped on a dead Pog head as he did so, causing one of its huge eyeballs to burst from its mooring, filling the room with its death stench.

“Don’t start that crying shit on me, Shelly.”

He picked up a small propane torch and began heating up the largest container. Pog blood roiled across the top of the jug, threatening to spill over. It smelled like rotten licorice.

“You fucked this piece of shit, didn’t you? Don’t fucking lie to me!”

Using a thick cloth, Nick poured the boiled solution through a strainer, into a smaller glass half-full of what looked like sugar.

“I told you last time,” Shelly said, her voice a whisper. “Never hit me again.”

Nick whipped back around, glass in hand and stomped back up into Shelly’s face. His hand trembled as he lifted the glass up to his mouth and drank deeply from it.

He was distilling Pog blood into alcohol? Guts had seen Poog used in all manner of weird ways, but he’d yet to see anyone boil it down and make a drink out of it.

Nick closed his eyes, let his head roll back. His muscles visibly relaxed. He leaned backward to the point that Guts was sure he was about to fall over, passed out. Then he straightened up, opened his eyes, and offered the brewed concoction to his sister.

She touched the mark on her cheek again, hesitant and fearful to accept the glass from her brother, and yet there was a longing in her face that begged for the drug contained within.

“Nick. I… I shouldn’t.”

He swirled the glass, smirking at her, his eyes half-closed and bloodshot. Telltale golden slime leaked from his tear ducts. He let his free hand casually press up against the crotch of her shorts.

With reluctance, she said, “I-I don’t want any.” Then she gently pushed his hand away and added, “Don’t touch me again.”

Nick’s lips, all six of them, began to tremble. He opened his main mouth to speak, then stopped. Instead, he backhanded Shelly across the other side of her mouth.

“Bitch!” he screamed. “Don’t ever tell me what to do! I’m in charge. Got it!?”

Faster than Guts thought possible, Shelly grabbed up the shotgun from the floor and stuck it in Nick’s face.

“Enough!” she screamed through a hard sob, tears streaming down her face, the gun steadily shaking in her hands.

Nick stiffened. Just for a moment, his face showed genuine fear. Then he cocked his head to the side and laughed.

“What’re you gonna do, sis? Shoot me?” He grabbed the barrel and placed it to his forehead.

“Go ahead, little sis. Blow my head off. Who’s gonna take care of you then, huh? That guy?” Nick motioned to Guts. “You saw how easy it was for me to outsmart him. You wouldn’t last a week out here on the road without me.”

Shelly looked at Guts, then back to Nick.

“C’mon, sissy, just put the gun down. You don’t wanna shoot me. I’m sorry I hit you. I was just mad, OK? Honest mistake.” Nick smiled, then added, “Won’t happen again. Promise.”

Shelly let the gun falter for a moment, then stepped backward and leveled it back to her brother’s face. “No, Nick. You said that last time. Last time you promised no more hitting. You lied.”

“Fucking cunt!” Nick knocked the shotgun away with ease. He grabbed Shelly by the throat, golden foam frothing at the corners of his mouths. He lifted her off the ground with both hands clenched around her tiny neck. The shotgun dropped to the floor.

Shelly made short gasping noises as she clawed uselessly at Nick’s arms in a desperate attempt to free herself.

Nick squeezed harder.

Shelly’s eyes bulged, her face turning a deep purple. “Ni-i-cky, p-please!”

He choked her for a second longer, then abruptly dropped her.

“Fine,” he said in a small child-like voice as Shelly twitched at his feet. “You choose him over me. See if I care! I’m going to his room for supplies. You better say what you have to say to your new lover while you can, ‘cause I’m slitting his fucking throat when I get back.”

He looked at Shelly, all apologies in his eyes.

She looked away, disgusted.

Nick quickly left the room, slamming the door behind him. Shelly and Guts were left in silence, occasionally broken by her weak sobs.

***

Check back next month for the next exciting chapter of Vampire Guts In Nuke Town, or click here to buy the full novel via Kindle or paperback on Amazon.com.

Vampire Guts In Nuke Town Chapter 1

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Vampire Guts in Nuketown was originally published in 2013. It is available to purchase in full via Kindle or paperback by clicking here.

Chapter 1

“Fuck.”

Guts woke up in the dark. He rolled to his left, immediately regretting it. He moaned aloud. His body ached. His head pounded.

Just another day in paradise, he thought as his eyes adjusted to the nearly pitch black surroundings. He reached up, rubbing his hand across the stubble on his smooth, bald head, letting his hand travel all the way to the back of his neck.

It throbbed.

Still disoriented from sleep, he sat up and looked around. He was lying on the floor next to a filthy, piss-soaked bed. If the bed looked like that, he didn’t want to think about what the floor looked like…

Further inspection showed yellowed, cracked wallpaper with graffiti sprayed across the walls, a tiny bathroom door half open, a wrecked TV set stripped of all its copper tubing and metal knobs, and an air conditioning wall unit in much the same condition.

Guts picked himself up off the floor. A motel room. He must have been delirious in the fading light of the afternoon. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he got there. At least he’d had the presence of mind to pick a room that still had a functioning door. The days… hell, the weeks blended together anymore. He was starting to crack up, lose his edge. He couldn’t even remember the last time he saw a human. A real one, anyway. Somebody not grotesquely malformed by radiation, or worse, driven totally mad by it.

The loneliness. The loneliness was the worst part. It started playing tricks with your mind. Made things seem real that maybe weren’t and made real things seem… weird.

He’d been on the road too long. How long had it been since he’d spent any meaningful time at a trading post? Twelve months? Fourteen? Sometimes Guts wondered if he’d strayed too close to a spent nuke himself and just hadn’t realized that he’d gone batshit insane. It would certainly explain a lot about this fucked up world…

It was getting steadily worse. The virus. The plague. How long before every last human on earth—what was left of them, anyway—was infected? As if nuclear fallout wasn’t bad enough. If there was a god, he had a fucked up sense of humor. Feral mutant vampires and a planet poisoned by radiation? Talk about getting fucked at both ends.

Fuck it, he thought as he crossed the small room. The more Fangers there are, the more I get to kill.

Naked, Guts stretched his massive back as he stepped into the pitch black bathroom and pissed into the decaying toilet. He was suddenly glad the electricity didn’t work. He could hear the scurrying and clicking of insects frantically trying to escape his stream of urine. He hated the way the new nuked-up cockroaches looked. Their little black faces looked far too human.

He suddenly became concerned that he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to this particular cesspool of rot and decay. Guts was usually very careful about picking shelter from the Blood Fiends. This motel could be crawling with Vamps as thick in number as the roaches and beetles picking at his toenails.

Stupid. Dumb mistake.

It’s mistakes like this that are gonna get you killed, Guts thought, finishing in the dingy bathroom.

Before he could assess the situation further, a frantic pounding at the motel door jolted him back to reality. Couldn’t be vampires. Judging by the light coming in from the shredded up blinds, dusk was still at least 3 hours off. Had he really slept through the night and the whole day? The pounding continued.

“Is someone there?” It was a high-pitched, frantic voice. A girl?

“Please! Is somebody in there?” Her tone was desperate, near hysterical.

It had been twelve years since The Infestation. Ten since the nukes. “The Infestation” is what survivors called the viral outbreak, the epidemic that ended life on earth as we knew it. The larger cities had been overrun early on. That’s where the biggest concentration of Fangers nested. It was a death sentence to travel through them. Now most people huddled together in little shanty towns where they traded drugs, trinkets, and their bodies in exchange for the relative safety of numbers, even if those numbers were dwindling daily, picked off at night by Fangers clever enough to slip past the few brave men willing to stand watch, or dumb enough to think they stood a chance against the monsters. Guts preferred to take his chances by himself. On the road…

In the early days, Guts saw a lot of activity on the road; survivalists finally living out their fantasy life, small communes of idealistic hippie types thinking the infestation was a sign from God to live more simplistic, back-to-basics lives. Mostly he saw loners like himself. Till all the big animals died, food started to run out and power grids failed. Then the survivalists banded together, forming gangs of roving, desperate savages who would do anything for a can of irradiated green beans. The communes quickly turned into cannibal cults, worshiping new flesh gods, performing unspeakable acts upon the innocent in the hopes that their new gods would reward them with an unsuspecting traveler to roast alive on the ritual altar to keep the vampires away for another night. The only way to truly survive in this new world was to understand that all decency and morality was lost when the thin veil of civilized culture washed away in a sea of bloody violence, fangs, and radiation.

But even in those early days, Guts never met a lone girl…

“I saw you moving around in there. I need your help! Please!”

After another moment’s deliberation, Guts made his decision.

“Who’s with you?” He kept his voice calm, but authoritative.

“It- It’s just me! Let me in, please. I’m scared!”

“You’re lying.”

There was a long pause.

“It’s my brother, sir. He’s sick. He needs help.”

Guts opened the door.

She was young. A teenager. Not a day over nineteen; a fact made obvious by her cherubic features, smooth olive skin, and pouty, rose-colored lips.

Guts was instantly taken aback by her beauty, but there was something else, some air of familiarity that he couldn’t quite place. Where did he know her from? That was a silly question; he couldn’t possibly know her. He didn’t know anyone anymore. He’d been on the road so long, everyone he ever knew from any outpost was long dead. The more he thought about it, the more the back of his neck throbbed…

Her eyes grew wide as she scanned the battle hardened man before her. She hesitated at the twin ram horn tattoos—bizarrely adorned with centipede legs—on the sides of his bald head. Tattoos that made him look like a creature out of old Greek legends. Her vision crept down past Guts’ sculpted chest, past the jagged scar that ran horizontally across his chiseled stomach. Down even lower…

Her face turned red. Her eyes quickly darted away.

Guts had forgotten he was still naked. The situation was made all the more awkward by the fact that his thick member had become slightly engorged by the sight of her; even more so by the second. It’d been too long since he laid eyes on a woman not horribly disfigured by fallout. In fact, he didn’t see any extra limbs, skin disorders, or anything at all wrong with her.

“I-I’m sorry if I interrupted you.” She chanced another quick glance at his penis. “It’s just that I’m really scared for my brother. He’s diabetic. He hasn’t had insulin in a long time. Usually, he can keep it in check, but we haven’t been able to find any food for three days. I-I think he’s going into shock.” She finished, meeting his gaze, tears welling up in her eyes.

Guts felt both lust and pity in equal measure. He stepped aside. “Come in. I’ll get dressed, then we’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

The girl gave a tentative glance back the way she’d come, then followed him inside. Before she could shut the door, Guts was on her. He slammed her hard against the door. His silver blade was against her neck.

She let out a terrified whimper.

He reached up and latched the flimsy motel lock, trapping her inside. His face was inches from hers.

She breathed in sharp, shallow gasps, sweat beading up on her forehead.

He spoke between clenched teeth. “Now, I’ll ask you one more time, while you still have the benefit of speaking with your vocal chords intact. Who else is with you?”

Eyes wide with terror, the young girl shook her head quickly from side to side.“I-I told you, sir! I promise. I’m not lying. It-It’s just me and my big brother!”

Guts pressed the blade harder against her small throat and stared bore holes into her terrified eyes. “I swear to Christ, if you’re lying to me… there are things worse than death waiting for you.”

He relaxed the blade, only then realizing that his full erection was pressed against the girl’s bare stomach. This hadn’t gone unnoticed by her, either. Her breath steadied. Slowly, she pushed back against him. She gently took his member in her hand and looked into his eyes.

“If you help my brother, I’ll take care of you.” She looked down at the floor. “I’m real good.”

Guts pulled away. His cock pulsed. He wanted badly to take her right there in that rotting motel. It was the steady throbbing at the back of his neck matching that of his boner that snapped him out of his lustful haze. He reached up again, massaging the spot.

The girl slid down the door into a seated position, eye level with his hard cock.

Guts turned from her, quickly dressing.

The girl gasped when he pulled his sleeveless vest on over his bare chest. Affixed to the back of its leather was a dried out and stretched vampire face, immune to the affects of the radiation sun due to some arcane chemical treatment. It was awful, Guts knew. A horrific reminder to all bloodsuckers that he was not the man to fuck with, and an equal warning to any human or mutant that might see him as an easy target out on the road.

“What’s your name?” he asked, finally, slipping into his steel-toed combat boots, adorned with rows of silver-tipped spikes.

“Shelly. Yours?”

“You can call me Guts.”

“Guts? That’s a weird name.”

He turned back to her, buckling his pants. “Yeah, well…” he said, tracing the long scar across his belly with a finger. “This world is a weird place.”

Guts opened the door and looked out into the weird pink and green light that made up what people still tried to call daylight in some feeble attempt to hold on to a past that became more and more a distant memory with each passing day. The fallout had caused some fundamental shift in the light spectrum that changed the way sunlight filtered through the upper levels of the atmosphere. That was some brilliant scientist’s way of combating The Infestation. Some geek who’d watched too many Sci-Fi and horror movies as a kid, or something.

The vampires weren’t allergic to normal sunlight. In fact, the infection was closer to Lycanthropy than traditional Vampire folklore. When a person was bitten, they transformed into a giant, bloodthirsty, bat-like monster. Ugly fuckers. Totally mindless aside from the instinct to feed, fuck, and kill. Their resemblance to bats and their tendency toward drinking their victim’s blood is what gave the scientists the idea to irradiate the atmosphere.

It worked… sort of. The Fangers straight up exploded in this new pink and green light, driving them into hiding during daylight hours, supposedly making their containment easier. The President gave an address on the one remaining public TV channel back in those days, urging vigilance and patience in the face of this disaster. He said the infestation that had destroyed our civilization would be controlled and eradicated within twelve months; that the world as we knew it would begin to rebuild itself just as quickly as it had fallen apart. After the station cut the transmission, there were no more presidential addresses. Hell, there was no more TV. Ever.

The thing the late president failed to tell people (maybe a thing the scientists neglected to tell him) was that the new sky didn’t just affect Fangers. Before long, all sorts of grotesque mutations started popping up on the roads: men with babies growing out the sides of their heads, women with eyeballs in the palms of their hands, things too hideous to even call people anymore scuttling in the shadows. The New Light wreaked havoc on our DNA.

People were forced to choose between hiding from the light or hiding from the vampires. They chose to walk in the light; the ones that lived, anyway.

Guts grabbed Shelly and pushed her out the door first.

“Ow. You could be a little more gentle, you know? Jeez!”

“Shut up.” He scanned the parking lot for movement, trying to spot any sort of ambush. He saw nothing. “Where’s your brother?”

“It’s just over there. Room number 17.”

The motel was a real piece of work. It was a long, single story structure set in a C shape, with the office on one end and a storage shed on the far side. Both had been razed long ago. Again, Guts wracked his brain for the memory of finding this dump. Half the rooms had already caved in. Gnarled Technicolor vegetation, mutated into bizarre shapes, crawled across the half that was still standing. It wound its way up the sign next to what was left of the street, threatening to pull it down, too. The name of the motel had long been obscured by the weird vegetation. The vines seemed to writhe threateningly. Not wanting to contend with the hungry plant life, Guts stayed near the middle of the parking lot, which spanned the length of the dilapidated motel. Only three rooms still had doors: his, Shelly’s, and one room in between.

That’s when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye from inside the husk of a burned out car twenty yards away in the middle of the street.

Guts grabbed Shelly in a headlock and spun around, blade to her face. “Come out, or I’ll fucking kill her right now!”

Shelly gasped, clawing at his arm.

“How many are there? Tell me right now or you die.”

She gagged. “I-I have no idea! I told you the truth, I swear to God I did!”

Guts shuffled forward several paces before he saw the head poke out again. He stopped cold. He could see what it was now. He relaxed his grip.

“Pogs,” he said, pushing Shelly behind him.

Pogs were…well, nobody was quite sure exactly what Pogs were. But they were by far the most annoying aspect of this vampire-plagued apocalypse. They weren’t mutated humans, that much was clear. They were called Pogs because their little squat, three foot tall bodies resembled frogs, with huge eyes that sat on top of their big round heads, and wide, disgusting mouths that constantly dripped purple mucus, but their skin was hairless and pink, like pig skin.

So, Pogs.

The Pogs were scavengers. They picked through the remains of the wasteland that even the most desperate humans found useless. What made them so unsettling to look at (beyond their bizarre bodies and grunting, anxious nature) was their tendency to cut off the faces of the dead human bodies they encountered across the wasteland and wear them like masks to try to blend in with people, as though an overgrown pig-frog, constantly grunting and eating human shit, was ever going to blend in.

They were passive little things. They never tried to hurt anyone. The bones and flesh they scavenged were products of The Infestation; the bodies that the vampires devoured for food and left in too mangled a state to turn into blood-hungry beasts themselves.

The worst part about Pogs, though, was that somewhere along the way, some desperate lunatic had decided to snort a bunch of Pog blood, maybe out of boredom, maybe out of some need to re-create his long dead junkie lifestyle. Regardless of the why, the fact of the matter is, it worked. Pog blood, when snorted, smoked, or shot up, got people high as fuck. It was some kind of hallucinogen that also possessed the same euphoric qualities of a drug like Heroin. In a world this horrific, with death hiding around every bend, people flocked to a drug like that.

Then the rumors started.

Since vampires never attacked Pogs, they must be immune to the virus. If they were immune to the virus, then their blood must make people immune to the virus. Guts had always been skeptical. It sounded to him like desperate junkie bullshit. Just like any other virus, you were either immune to it, or you weren’t. It was as simple as that. There were no scientists working on a cure; all the scientists had become vampires.

Guts had never done Poog, as it was called; mainly because he’d already found out he was immune to the virus after he didn’t change into a ravenous, bloodthirsty monster the first time he was bit, but also because he liked to keep his senses sharp and focused. He’d seen Poogers, high as fuck off of Pog blood, strip naked, pull Pog skin over their heads, and run right out into the night, hollering about being invincible. Those people never came back. Drugs were for the weak.

There were two Pogs in the twisted wreckage. Both wore decaying faces over their gumdrop-shaped heads. Their bulbous eyes stuck out from the tops of the flesh masks. The one in the front seat let out a high-pitched, “Woop!” noise and ducked into the back seat with the other. Pogs were generally skittish around people, what with people’s tendency to skin them and bleed them out for drugs.

Guts turned, pushed Shelly forward. “Come on, they’re not hurting anything.”

The Pogs wooped again. Guts ignored them. When they wooped a third time, Shelly turned back, giving them a nervous glance, then cried out.

Guts spun around. The Pogs were out of the car, charging him from across the parking lot. The one in the lead wore a dead face with blonde hair. It also carried a rancid-looking spine and skull, which it now swung over its head like some grand mace. The one in the rear wore a face with black hair and spun a pair of skeletal arms linked at the hands like nunchucks as it ran.

Pogs weren’t known for their grace. Their bell-shaped, squat little bodies tripped and lurched, their spindly little arms coupled with their over-long fingers and toes made them look almost comical as they closed in on their attack.

The blonde one skidded to a stop in front of Guts. It jumped up and down as it swung its crude weapon in the air, whooping loudly the entire time. More than once its rotten mask-face drooped, threatening to fall from its ugly head. The creature had to stop and readjust the straps before continuing its bizarre dance.

Guts was completely taken aback. He’d never seen Pogs attack people before. Unsheathing his blade, he stepped forward and made short work of the first one, slicing it stem to sternum with one great swing of the knife, spilling golden Pog blood across 4 parking spaces.

The second one bounced to a halt right outside of Guts’ range. It jumped up and down, whooping and grunting, big googly eyes frantic as it waved its bone weapons in Guts’ face, almost like it was trying to communicate something…

In a flash, Guts was on it, stabbing straight through its death mask into its snorty nasal cavity. It bled less than its companion as it died quickly on the end of Guts’ blade, twitching. He yanked the knife out of the dead Pog’s head, letting the thing drop to the ground. He wiped the thick blood on his pants, turning back to Shelly.

“Why would they do that?”

She had no answer as they cleared the remaining paces toward room number 17.

Shelly gave one more furtive glance back toward the mangled bodies of the Pogs, and then reached out to open the door. Guts grabbed her by her short pony tail, jerking her away in one violent motion. She let out a small squeak of surprise and pain before he cupped his other hand around her mouth to stifle any sort of scream, and then kicked the door twice with his boot.

Her breathing came in short gasps for a moment, until she calmed down. Guts pulled his blade back out and waited in a striking position, still covering her mouth with his free hand.

No response.

“I told you, sir. He’s really sick. He wasn’t awake when I came over to you.” She struggled in his grasp to free her airway.

Guts let her go. If this was a trap, if she was working him, she was a damn good actress. He put his knife back in his boot. “Open it up. I’ll take a look at him. But if he’s as bad as you say he is… well, you’re gonna need to find some new company to keep.”

She frowned at him, then opened the door.

Her room was identical to the one Guts woke up in, with the exception that, unbelievably, it was even more disheveled. Dust hung in the air, thick as gnats. A lone bare bulb swung dead from a broken fixture above the doorway. A nasty old tarp was haphazardly thrown up against the ruined area to his left in some futile attempt to cover the exposed beams of the blown-out wall. At the far wall, propped against it, lay one of the pair of filthy twin beds, the victim of a past scuffle or violent act long forgotten. The other mattress, pushed against the right wall, contained Shelly’s brother. He lay face down, shirtless, one arm hanging limp off to the side.

Guts entered the small room first. Shelly shut the door behind them. Guts approached the unconscious boy. His mop of shaggy brown hair was a mess. The kid couldn’t have been more than 21-22 years old.

“What’s his name?”

“Nick.”

Guts knelt beside the bed, put a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “How long has he been unconscious?” He turned his head to face Shelly, and was met with explosive pain.

***

Check back next month for the next exciting chapter of Vampire Guts In Nuke Town, or click here to buy the full novel via Kindle or paperback on Amazon.com.

Vampire Guts In Nuke Town Chapter 0

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Vampire Guts in Nuketown was originally published in 2013. It is available to purchase in full via Kindle or paperback by clicking here.

Chapter 0

BEFORE THE BOMB

“Is it on?”

“Yes, sir. You’re live.”

The man took a deep breath, eyes weary, and looked into the camera.

“My dear citizens of the United States, and those of you watching from around the world,” he said, sweat dripping off his pale, sickly face onto his suit jacket. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. He looked tired. A type of tired that no amount of makeup—and he wore much to cover his condition—was going to hide. “I come to you today, not as your president, but as your brother in this crisis. A crisis you all know too well. A crisis that ordinary people on the streets call ‘The Infestation’, an unbeatable virus that’s turning your loved ones into bloodthirsty monsters. But here, in the Whitehouse, we don’t call it The Infestation. We call it The Bitch.”

Murmurs sound off from behind the camera. The President raises a hand, and they go quiet.

“I wasn’t supposed to say that. I’m supposed to follow the script and tell you all that everything is going to be OK, and that we’ve got this situation under control. I’m supposed to tell you all to obey the 5 o’clock curfew, to send only the strongest members of your family out to the food rationing stations, to stay in your homes at all costs, and report any sightings of… the creatures… to your local National Guard liaison.

“I’m supposed to tell you to take your immunity injections, and that more are on the way.

“But after what happened yesterday…” he lifted up his arm and looked at the bloody bandage it wore around the forearm area, “when we broadcast live from the lab to show you concerned citizens the progress we’d made toward a cure, well, I- I just can’t, in good conscience, come on national television and lie to you folks.”

More murmurs.

“I…” The president coughed hard into his hand. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. Blood came away on the white cloth. He swallowed hard and continued.“I’m telling you right here, right now, on live TV, what even the closest members of my cabinet don’t know. I’ve consulted with my top military generals, and indeed those from around the globe, and we’ve come to a conclusion about The Infestation. The only, conclusion, really.”

He looked sternly into the camera, redoubled his focus, and spoke on.

“Our war against these… things. Aw, hell, let’s call them what they are, for once. Vampires! Our war, the global war against these vampire creatures has failed!”

He slammed his fist down on his desk, showing the type of white-bred, southern gusto that had won him the election and re-election. The type of gusto he hadn’t displayed once since the first outbreak occurred over twenty-four months prior.

“Medicine,” he said, looking at his wounded arm again, “has failed us. There will be no cure for this epidemic, this nightmare apocalypse that has swept over our great nation, and the farthest reaches of the world. That is truth, America. Honesty.”

Shouting came from behind the camera. There were sounds of a scuffle, and then a door slamming hard.

“Do not panic, America. Do not panic, planet Earth. Hope is not lost. Where medicine has failed us, science will still be our savior.”

The president coughed again. This time, a fit seized him. His sixty years showed on his face and in his thinning hair as his body shook up and down from the force of the cough. A black-suited man came into frame, taking the president by the arm. He shook the man away, pushing him off camera. When he opened his eyes again and looked into the camera, they were shot through with thick, bulging red veins. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on a gravelly tone.

“Vampires rule the dark, but we will once again own the light. Strategically placed missiles across the globe are preparing to launch, even as we speak, an experimental type of nuclear weapon. This weapon will detonate simultaneously across the vast expanse of our upper atmosphere, triggering a fundamental molecular change in the ionosphere.

“Now, you know me, America. I’m no scientist. I don’t know what that means anymore than you do. But I trust these men and women. They’ve been working for two solid years on this weapon. They are our only hope.”

More coughing. The president was so shaken by the throes that he clutched the corners of his desk. Blood spittle flew from his mouth, flecking the papers laid before him. This time two men came into the shot, offering the president a new kerchief, wiping the dripping blood from his mouth. One of them said, “This interview is over, sir. Let’s get you back to bed. This was a bad idea.”

He shook them off. “Let me finish, damn you! I’m almost through!” The men backed away.

“The scientists have told me that the nukes are harmless to you and I; that the radiation will be pulled up and out of the atmosphere, creating a new layer of energy around the planet, a layer that will filter sunlight in such a way as to attack the corrupted cells mutated by the Infestation virus. Make no mistake. It won’t cure the afflicted. It will destroy the damn things! We call The Infestation Virus “The Bitch” because that’s what we’re going to make it, Citizens of the world! Our Bitch! We will eradicate this plague on our people! We will survive this horror! We will once again rule this planet!”

With that, the coughs seized him entirely. He slumped over on the desk, coughing, hacking, and spitting blood. After a few moments, he was silent.

The two men came back into the frame, attempting to lift the president from his desk. When he lifted his head again, his eyes glowed a preternatural solid red. Like a spotlight from hell blasting out from inside his head.

Voices from behind the camera cried out, “He’s changing! Get away from him, NOW!”

Before the two men could react, the president whipped out his hands, clutching them both by their throats. Their surprised, choked sputters found a quick end when he crushed both of their esophagi simultaneously.

The skin on his face and head began to twitch and squirm before the camera. He opened his mouth, revealing rows of fangs too large to be contained within his human jaw line, so it grew to accommodate its new cargo. As did his ears, gaining six inches and ending in points; forehead, widening; and brow, growing ridged and thick. His nose shrank, receding almost entirely into its own footprint, then shriveling into a raisin-like black scrunch in the middle of his face. Fine, red hairs slithered out of his open pores, covering most of his face and filling in his receding hairline. Finally his skin turned, in a matter of seconds, from a rosy pink to a dark brown.

The President stood, screeched a loud, inhuman sound from between his massive new jaws, and flipped the enormous desk forward, smashing into the camera and three men standing behind it, their screams of pain distorting the sound of the broadcast. The camera survived the impact, laying now on its side, filming the horrific scene at an odd angle from the floor, an angle which allowed the entirety of the nightmare beast to be shown, head to toe. Growing to nearly 8 feet tall, the thing had shredded its suit and slacks. Its huge, clawed toes stuck comically from ruined shoes. A pair of hideous prehensile wing appendages jutted out of its back, swaying threateningly with their razor-sharp, single-clawed tips.

The door crashed open, off camera, causing the monster to look up and screech again, defiantly ripping the remainder of the shredded clothes from its now massive form.

“Go, go, go, go, go! Take him down! Take him down!”

A young man in a black suit and glasses with a white ear piece dove into the shot, arms spread wide, protecting the vampire president from harm.

“He’s still the president! Back down, now! You have no jurisdiction in the White House! I will consider any act of violence upon his person a Coup attempt! I will personally-“

And then the vampire reached out, grabbed the young man’s head, opened its enormous fangs, and sunk them deep into his brain. Clear cerebral fluid and blood gushed out of the jagged holes in great spurts. The man convulsed in the vampire’s arms. His sunglasses fell off, revealing eyes already rolled into the back of his head.

The vampire screeched again in defiance, tossing the helpless body to the floor. It landed directly in front of the camera. The man’s face contorted and twitched. He gurgled as the seizure continued, foaming at the mouth, bleeding from the ears and nose.

“Fire!”

Gunshots ripped through the air, smacking into the vampire’s wide chest with a series of quick thump, thump, thumps. The monster staggered backward as the gunfire continued. Black glowing blood erupted from its wounds, but it did not go down. Instead, it pushed forward into the hail of bullets until it stood directly above the Secret Service agent dying on the floor. Only its taut, muscled leg remained in the shot.

A stream of urine rained down on the man’s face as he died, an act of inhuman ferocity that would serve as the final publicly broadcasted image from the United States Government. The signal was cut off, replaced with a marker and looped music. It read:

“Please Stand By. Make sure to take your immunity shots twice daily and report any suspicious behavior to your local National Guard Liaison. We must persevere. We must be vigilant. Together we will survive. We will return you to your regularly scheduled programming shortly.”

At 6:41pm August 9th 2020, just twenty-four hours after the last Presidential Address, the nukes launched, and everything changed. Forever.

***

Check back next month for the next exciting chapter of Vampire Guts In Nuke Town, or click here to buy the full novel via Kindle or paperback on Amazon.com.