The Iron in Blood

I had noticed a back door in the main building on my reconnaissance run. I would have to do something about that. I left the rifle standing in a small cluster of trees, and jogged around the back of the house. It took me forty seconds, two grenades and a roll of dark nylon fishing line to booby trap the back door. Any vampire trying to open this door would get a pretty explosive surprise. It might not kill them, but it would definitely alert me to their attempt to escape. And then I would kill them.

I was about to head back to where I had left the rifle, when I smelled the familiar stench of a blood addict vampire. The same one I'd smelled outside Rebecca's school. I saw him out of the corner of my eye heading away from the barn and towards the main building, and then I was running as fast as I could towards him. I didn't want him to smell me and alert those animals inside. He turned a fraction of a second before I reached him, but his dry squawk was cut off when I grabbed his throat with my left hand. He tried to fight me off, but I was much stronger than he was. He hadn't had a blood meal in a few days, and it showed. It was almost too easy. I twisted his head around with my right hand until I heard it snap, and then I twisted it some more. Right up until his head became detached from the rest of his body.

I waited a few seconds until his blood had drained from his open neck and then I carried both head and corpse up to my clump of trees. I had been wondering what to do to create a diversion, and now I had my answer. I grinned.

I stood for a few more seconds surveying the terrain, and then I hurled that head over arm through one of the lit windows downstairs, the one on the left, and I sat down to wait.

I didn't have to wait long. A head peered around one of the curtains draped across that same window for a fraction of a second too long. I sighted down the scope of the rifle and squeezed the trigger. The face disappeared in a puff of blood and brain matter.

A silhouette appeared in the doorway. Two shots in quick succession, both in the face. The silhouette collapsed in a lifeless heap.

I'd spent some time during the trip here pondering about how to kill a vampire. I'd come to the conclusion that if I could shoot them in a critical region, like the head or the heart, then even if they could regenerate those areas, it would take them some time. I reckoned I'd be able to incapacitate most of them with gunshot wounds, and then finish them off properly before they had a chance to regenerate. An hour at least, maybe two. I placed a hand on the chest of the decapitated body lying next to me. It was cold, no heartbeat, no signs of life. Result. There were no more heads to shoot at so I pulled the pin on my last grenade and lobbed it through one of the upstairs windows. The tinkling of broken glass was followed by a loud explosion. Still no heads to shoot at. I took the magazine out of the Heckler and Koch, and jammed it in one of my pockets. I didn't want one of those vampires finding the rifle where I had to leave it, and taking pot shots at me. I took the one of the Glocks out of my belt, and chambered the first of seventeen rounds. I had two spare magazines in my left pocket, just in case. I set off towards the main building at a gallop, dodging from left to right occasionally, just in case they decided to fire at me. I needn't have bothered.