13 Bullets

If somebody wants to be your enemy, there's only one thing you can do. You give them exactly what they want. It confuses them and makes them wonder what you're up to.

Do we have a plan?” she asked. “Yes,” he told her. “Shoot everything that moves.

You have a wife?” Caxton demanded. “I killed a vampire twenty years ago, and another one last night. I had to keep myself busy in the meantime,” he told her.

Wow. So what was the vampire like?” “Pale. Big. Toothy,” the trooper answered.

What’s that smell?” Reynolds asked. That smell is the stuff they grow mushrooms in.” DeForrest sniffed the air. “Shit?” he asked. Captain Suzie shrugged. “Manure.

..every once in a while, maybe twice a year, I dream of blood. It tastes like copper pennies on your tongue. It’s hot, hotter than you expect, and very wet at first, but it clots even as it fills your mouth. It sticks in your throat but you swallow it down, you can feel it stringy and dark in the back of your throat but you force it down so you can have some more, another mouthful, and another. I know it so well now. The dryness of it, the clots in your teeth. The need.

In the dark ages a vampire could live for decades unopposed, feeding nightly on people whose only defense was to bar their windows and lock their doors and always, always, be home before sundown. When it became necessary to slay a vampire there was only one way it could be done. There were no guns and certainly no jackhammers at the time. The vampire slayers would gather up every able-bodied male in the community. The mob of them would go against the vampire with torches and spears and sticks if they had to. Very many of them would die in the first onslaught but eventually enough of them would pile on top to hold the vampire down.

He looked right into her and then he said, “In a second I’m going to ask you if you’re okay. Your answer is extremely important. If you can keep fighting, or at least keep running, you have to say ‘yes’. Otherwise we have to run away and let them win this one. Now. Are you okay?

Hey.” He glanced away from her, instead looking down at the coffin. He looked back at her and raised his eyebrows. “Want a peek?

Sometimes we call it ‘Extra Chunky,’ too.” “Why’s that?” she finally asked. “Because,” DeForrest said, barely able to contain his mirth, “when you run over a hippy with this thing, extra chunky is about all that’s left.

Say again, over,” he announced. “I was saying that I’m going from here on foot,” Arkeley told them. “You can follow however you choose but this place was never meant for a military parade.” “He’s making fun of your truck,” Caxton told Captain Suzie.

Caxton crawled into the back while Arkeley took the front passenger seat. His fused vertebrae trumped her sprained ribs, he announced.