Dragging my wounded leg downstairs, I tear away the carpet with my nails and hastily spin the dial on the floor vault. I’ve lost so much blood, I have to struggle to remember the combination. But when I finally pull open the door, I feel a wave of relief.
A break at last! My foe has overlooked this vault. I take out a couple of .45 semiautomatic Glocks and stuff them in my belt, along with three throwing knives. But my eyes feast on the one Barringer sniper rifle I have left. It has a powerful sighting scope that’s equipped with a laser, which works well with my superhuman vision.
I grab as many clips of armor-piercing bullets as I can carry, a dozen. Since each clip holds twenty rounds, I figure I’ll have 240 chances to kill my foe.
He must suspect I’m no longer upstairs, because he suddenly shifts his Gatling gun to the living room. Once more, I’m fortunate my ears are able to anticipate his change in attack. Before the bullets even strike the living room, I shove a sofa and china cabinet against the wall to give me a brief umbrella of cover. Then I retreat back to the garage, essentially putting the house between me and him.
I have to go on the offensive. I’m pretty sure he knows I’m a vampire, because chances are he’s a vampire.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. No human being should have been able to hit me when I ran from the car to the house. Sure, it could have been a lucky shot, but what are the odds of that? Just the fact he was able to drag a Gatling gun into the woods indicates how strong he is. The weapon weighs a ton. No, he has to be a vampire.
But who made him? Yaksha would never have done so. He would never have disobeyed his vow to Krishna. And as for Eddie Fender—who for a time had access to Yaksha’s blood—I destroyed him years ago. The only source of vampire blood that seems remotely possible is the U.S. Army.
Joel Drake—an FBI agent I’d changed into a vampire—was the unwilling guest at a secret government facility outside Las Vegas. It’s true I wiped the damn place off the face of the earth with an H-bomb, but it was always possible the general in charge of the camp had shipped vials of Joel’s blood to the Pentagon before I exploded the bomb. Certainly the government connection would help explain where the vampire in the woods had obtained a Gatling gun.
Still, I have my doubts. I even have doubts about climbing on the roof, which would give me my best shot at the guy. My reasoning is simple—he will expect me to go up on the roof. If I fail to take him down with a single shot, he can casually spray the roof with his Gatling and splatter my guts over the grass, all the way down to the lake.
No, I must outwit him. I have to do the unexpected. I’m a sitting duck as long as I’m stuck in the house and he has plenty of ammunition for his supergun. I have to get to the woods, that will even the odds. I assume I know the area better than he does—after all, I live here. If I can reach the trees, I might even swing the odds in my favor.
True, my leg’s healing at a phenomenal rate, but I’m still crippled. I’ll need at least a minute to reach the trees, and he’ll spot me long before that. Unless . . . what? Can I create a diversion of some type?
A minute of frantic concentration gives me a plan.
Stage one—I have to transform my house into a big firecracker. I have materials that can do the trick: natural gas, a propane tank, the gasoline in the cars parked in my garage. But the key, the trigger, will be the propane tank. Unfortunately, I know enough about the gas to know it won’t explode—like such tanks always do on TV—simply by hitting it with a bullet. My trigger will need a trigger.
The powder in my sniper bullets is not ordinary gunpowder. It’s been soaked in nitroglycerin—that’s what causes the bullets to fire at such a high velocity. Working quietly, I unload two clips of bullets and spread them on an oil rag on the concrete floor. My hands are strong—I’m able to pull the caps off forty rounds without effort. Once I have a pile of powder available, I tie it into a ball and soak it with oil so it will stick to the side of the propane tank that stands outside my garage.
Next, I creep into the kitchen and turn on all the gas burners in my stove and oven. But I kill the pilot light, so the smell of gas begins to fill the room. At the same time I listen to what my assailant is up to. It sounds like he’s using the pause to reload his guns. He probably figures that I’m dead meat—that it’s only a question of time.
Back in the garage, I siphon off the bulk of the gasoline in the tanks of my cars into empty Sparkletts water bottles. The bottles hold five gallons each—I have only four. But I have over a hundred gallons of gasoline at my disposal, so I have to make several trips, back and forth, to spread the gasoline all over my house.
However, I leave each car with at least a gallon in its tank.
The cars are the trickiest part of my plan. When the time is right, I plan to launch them away from my house at different speeds and directions. They are a major part of the diversion I’m trying to create. I use rope and a complex combination of knots to rig the steering wheels to the gas pedals. I’m not worried my Porsche will block the way of the escaping cars. Just before I jumped from it, the Porsche veered to the right of the garage door.
Ah, the garage door—it is almost time to open it. Unfortunately, I have to launch the cars as soon as I open it or else he’ll just blow the vehicles up inside the garage. For that reason, I start all six of the cars before I open the door. It’s a delicate balancing act. The cars are in gear and ready to go. It’s only the closed door and the cramped space that keep them in place.
Once more, I stop and listen to what my opponent is up to. He appears to be doing likewise. He must have supernatural hearing to know I’ve started the cars, more proof that he is a vampire.
I stuff what clips I have left into my coat pockets and swing my sniper rifle over my shoulder. At last, I’m ready to make my dash for the woods. I have no idea what my odds are, but I like the many layers in my plan—the levels of deception. If I do die tonight, after walking the earth for almost two million nights, then no one can accuse me of not putting up a good fight.
I push a button and the main garage door opens. The cars take off like hungry rabbits, all in different directions. I’ve rigged each steering wheel separately. Some are pulled to the right, others to the left, some to the far right, and so on. Watching them race away, I’d swear they were driven by six different drunks.
I run out the side door, near where my blood covers the floor. My assailant immediately begins to fire on the cars, using his Gatling gun. He can’t see me leaving the house, not yet, because I’m still in its shadow. The steep outline of the roof protects me, and I know I’ll remain invisible until I reach a small rise three hundred yards away. Yet that’s only a third of the way to the trees, and I know he won’t take long to slay all six cars and realize they were nothing but a ruse.