Drac Snack Shack

Prologue- Intestines, Shiny Things, and Road Repairs

Prologue

Intestines, Shiny Things, and Road Repairs

    Most people would have been at the least perturbed if they saw someone walking around missing the back of their skull.

    This beauty, with it’s few number of hairs that were left blowing majestically in the subtle breeze, and the added bonus of maggots peeking out where the rotting skin gave way, was an Argint Inima. It means “silver heart” in Romanian. Its called this because an enchanted piece of silver is how it walks about and the only way to kill it is crushing  it‘s “heart”. 

    But its not as simple as just grabbing a hammer and smashing it’s chest in - which, trust me, is a feat in itself. Most Argint Inima have a slew of  curses protecting against would be crushers like myself.  Plus, the brute strength that all of them have included in the package, is nothing to sneeze at. Luckily, it was too busy ingesting a freshly killed feral cat to notice my presence as I hid behind an adjacent street corner.

    I’d estimate the time to be about four in the morning, and I was standing just off a street that even at this time of night has a significant amount of passersby. Thankfully, with help from my companions, the blinded were even more blind than usual and they adjusted their route accordingly.

    When taking down a target the trick is bringing the right weapons. In my bag of tricks, I had brought along tools that I thought would be suited to this task. Meaning: a shotgun, a battle ax, a sledge hammer, and my ever present Glock and combat knife.

    I carefully selected the ax and strapped on my  pistol and knife  before stepping out onto the street. To tell the truth though, all I really needed for this adventure was the shotgun and a lot of bullets. There’s not much that doesn’t die from a point blank blast from a shotgun.  However, being as stupid, cocky, and bored as I was, I had to grab the ax.

    When  I felt prepared to kick ass, I stepped out onto the conveniently dimly lit street.  The hulking mass of fungus finally  stopped stuffing its face the way I do in a chocolate store and sniffed the air, catching my scent, like some sort of woodland creature.  However when it turned around, it became even more clear than it already was that this thing was no Bambi.

    It’s eyes were cloudy but there was no doubt that it realized I was not a friend. It loped forward with a fast gait uncharacteristic to its zombie-like appearance.  I readied my ax  like a baseball bat, and burst into a run to meet it head on. Okay, so it probably was a waste of energy, but it made me feel like I was jousting.

    Sorry to disappoint, but when we reached each other, it didn’t happen in slow motion. Real fights are fast and ungraceful, anyone who has seen an actual fight will tell you that. Fights are about quick thinking, instinct, strength, and speed. Unfortunately, this fight was over as soon as it began. As I reached the Argint Inima, I had swung my ax and cleaved off its pathetic excuse of a head.

    Well of course that didn’t really kill it, but no matter what creature you are up against cutting off it’s head will at the least inhibit it. At this point, it had lost all sense of balance and was twitching on the floor.  Remember that to kill one of these things you have to smash its heart, which, well, is inside that nasty rotting corpse I was discussing earlier.

    So I’ll save you the details of tearing through it’s flesh and skip right to finding the piece of silver that someone had actually been through trouble of carving into a realistic heart. When I reached out to grab it and crush it however, it glowed for a brief moment and  disappeared. Which is not a good sign.

    That’s when more came. They appeared from the dark places on the street and from around the corner of the alleyways that I had previously found so convenient, like they were made from the shadows. There must have been, at the least, twenty of them. I suddenly felt like I needed my shotgun.

    Okay, I really needed my shotgun.

    As they started to close in, I made a mad dash for where I had stashed my stuff. Luckily, only one Argint Inima had come from that particular alley, and I managed to hack off one of it’s legs and escape with a nasty claw mark before I reached my black duffle bag.  I was instantly comforted as I felt my fingers close around the familiar double barrels of my shotgun.

    After that, everything went pretty quickly. I had grabbed plenty of ammo, so it felt as though I was playing one of those shooter games that acne-ridden boys favor, because it only took one shot for each of them to crumple. Of course, with each Argint Inima I  took down, a new layer of bodily fluids and rubble would decorate the road, until 27 (I counted) dead bodies lay twitching on the street.

    My job still wasn’t done though, as with their pieces of silver, the could still reanimate themselves. So, dead tired, I went back to the alley and brought out my bag, this time reaching for my sledge hammer. Then I played whack-a-corpse, except the pitiful things didn’t dodge my blows.

    What was troubling though was that each time I swung, I caught a glimpse of the Argint Inimas  glowing just like the first one had before it’s heart had disappeared. I shook the thought from my head, it was probably nothing.

    With the gory business over, I slumped against the wall behind me and tried to wipe the blood, sweat, and dirt off of my hands onto my already grubby clothes. Then I tugged my bag over and rummaged for my phone. When I found it I put in the now memorized number of my companions.

    “Ross?” said the distinctly male voice on the other end.

    Who else would call him at four in the morning?

    “Hey guys,” I sighed, knowing that my other companion would be listening in. “Its done, but I need a cleanup crew and an explanation.” I heard a groan from the other end and then I hung up. Too exhausted to move myself to a more respectable resting place, I slid my eyes shut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<:>~

      When I woke up, I was propped up in the front seat of the generic sedan we had rented earlier this week.

      As I opened the door, I caught a snippet of what a reporter just outside of a taped off area was saying, “Authorities say this road will be closed off for repairs during the next few days, due to an unexplained gas explosion.”

    Taking a quick glance around the scene at the edge of the area where my massacre began, I soon found my companions speaking in hushed tones.

    “A gas explosion? Seriously? That’s what we’re going with?” I asked, glancing up at the two men I was now accustomed to following me around.

    The man to my right replied, “ It was believable and easy to come up with. Besides you try coming up with an explanation for why one of the most traveled roads in San Francisco is decimated!” 

    It was just like him to distract me from bugging him by using one of my favorite words or all time. Ahh… decimated. It just sounds so complete. No similar word can compare with it. You see with the word “demolished”  it sounds too purposeful and professional. When you hear “demolished”, its usually to make ready for something else to built in its place. So its not really getting rid of anything, is it? It’s more like making room for something. Now, “destroyed” is a bit better. However, to me, it sounds to accidental and easily fixed. Little kids destroy a white carpet by spilling grape juice all over it, but that’s not exactly a big deal. Now when you hear the word decimated… What comes to mind is annihilation (which is another one of my favorite words). It sounds like something that can’t really be fixed, or if it can, restoring it is a long and painful process.

    Thankfully, at that point the man to my left decided to speak saving you from the boredom of another rant about some of my other favorite words.

    “Okay you two,” he chided in a mock motherly tone. “Let’s get back before this turns into a fight. Plus, the vamps will be wanting to know why their commute is going to be lengthened.”

    With that I sighed, knowing he was right and we all walked back to the car we had rented. Both men sat in front seats and we pulled out onto a traffic heavy street.

    I moaned, realizing that I had yet to do the most terrifying job of all time:

             Paperwork.