Vampire Hunter: Corey Crowgarden's guide to killing vampires for fun and profit.

Lesson 3 part 3

They made a sharp right at the gates, the slick roads threatening to slide them into the far ditch but Bobby's tight grip and sharp "Come on!" shouted that threat down. They were driving away from the highway and the main roads down mud and gravel roads. The windshield wipers, a little bent but thankfully not broken, beat a quick tempo spilling rain from their vision.
They were a good ten klicks down the road at the top of some unnamed hill.
Copses of trees had dotted the sides of the road, nothing but a soggy blur and shadows as the roared past, but now they rested at the crest of the hill with nothing but pasture on either side of them.
Bobby pulled over and rolled down the window a bit sacrificing the dryness for a little fresh air. He looked really pale and Carrie thought he might be sick.
"Someone lie to me and tell me I did the right thing. Tell me I needed to run those people.."
"They weren't people, Bobby," Crystals said.
"People wouldn't have pounded on the windows and the hood Bobby," Carrie said. "They would have tried to talk to us and they would've gotten off the road."
"And this is what Tim wants to learn how to do, huh?"
"No, it's what he wants to learn how to prevent."
Bobby sat and gulped in some air and the colour returned to his face.
"You know what..." Bobby said, "I'm kind of tired of being under the eight ball. We need to find your Dad, and then we can find Tim. This is the question we came all this way to ask, "do you know where your dad is Crystal?"
"No," Crystal said, "I know what he was doing. He posted last week on Facebook that he and some friends were going bowling."
"Bowling?" Bobby asked, "What is that supposed to mean."
"Oh no," Carrie said," Not bowling."
Crystal nodded and Carrie frowned.
"What the hell is bowling," Bobby said,"You people and your codes."
"Us people and our codes, you mean," Carrie said.
"Whatever," Bobby quipped. "What is it?"
"It's the worst kind of operation," Carrie said. "It means they've found a new location that is a nest and they've staked it out and gathered as much intell on it as they can. He's gathered a cell, maybe two..."
"Maybe three..." Crystal said.
"True, maybe three... has there ever been a four or a five?"
"Gee I hope not," Crystal replied.
"Okay so they gather a bunch of teams and...?"
"And they go in and raid, gun's blazin'," usually just around ten o'clock because all of the fangers are taking a dirt nap and everyone else is just settling in to a morning routine."
"It usually goes down like a standard house clearing except they like to try to find a way to enter from the top and fight their way down,"Crystal says.
Bobby sat and thought for a minute, "So that time we went with him..."
"Ya, he was bowling and that means there are often a lot of people with nothing, sometimes half naked running around lost," Carrie said.
Bobby thought back and remembered the day. It had been a nice summers day and they had parked the white panel rental van on the road where Corey had told them. He had thanked them both a lot and didn't really know why.
A short while later from some where behind him there were the sounds of gun fire and then a few minutes later they started to appear.
Skinny, dirty, raggedy half starved people came stumbling on to the road. Most had no shoes, some had no clothes at all. Carrie slid open the side door and there were blankets and shoes and boxes of clothes.
"Get in!" she yelled, "We are here to help."
Some of them did get in and start rummaging through the boxes of clothes but others were too frightened and started to run down the road.
"What about them?" Bobby remembered asking.
"Let them go," he recalled Carrie saying."You can only help the ones that want to be helped,
Soon enough the van was full and Bobby drove slowly and carefully, mindful of the speed and any police cars that they saw. It wasn't long until a few police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring passed them at high speed going the other way.
"Responding to your Dad?" Bobby had asked.
"They aren't coming to help free these people, Bobby," he recalled Carrie saying.
"Any police responding to that address are playing for the other team."
"Are you okay?" Carrie asked. "You looked like you were going to throw up."
"I'm okay," Bobby said, unconvincingly. "So, if he was going bowling, do we know who he would've called?"
"I know," Crystal said.
"Well, let's see iof they've burnt down that guys place yet."