The Princess and the Wizard
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: There are Castles and castles in this, but I own neither. Rating: K Time: 1967 and elsewhen.
Author's note: To get a look at what Castle's unit looks like, go to http colon back slash back slash ctrp dash 3d dash 4thcav dot com backslash troop dot html Click on org chart.
As the woman struggled to get to him, someone shot her in the head and her head exploded.
The other women also charged and were shot down.
"Anyone hurt?" Castle yelled.
No one was.
"Those are vampires!" He yelled at Kate, but she still seemed to be under some sort of vampire spell.
"She's beautiful. I want to go with her."
Cursing, Castle slung his M16 over his shoulder and drew his 1911A1 pistol. He jacked a round into the chamber. Now he could hold Kate and still fire.
"Wiggins, can you hold Alexis and shoot?"
Alexis was trying to pull away from Wiggins, mumbling, "She's beautiful. I need to go with her."
"Yeah. She isn't really fighting me. Just trying to walk away."
Castle checked the map.
"We need to go straight for a bit. Be careful."
They hadn't moved more than fifty feet when another blonde, looking exactly like her dead companion, jumped at them from atop a book stack. One of the grenadiers was looking right at her and fired before she landed. Her body sprawled on the floor, the top third of her was shredded.
"What are you using?" Wiggins yelled.
"Something I got from a snake eater sergeant. It's an M 79 round filled with steel ball bearings. It'll really ruin your whole day. Perfect for close range work like this."
"Have any spares?" Another grenadier asked.
He broke open the M 79. Just like the rest of their weapons, a live round was still inside and ready to fire.
"Sure." He handed out a round to each of the two other grenadiers.
"I can see them moving around." Castle yelled. "Stay together and keep your eyes open."
They had moved another few hundred yards when they were hit with a human wave, or more accurately, a vampire wave, attack. The vampires came at them from all four sides and from above. They were cut down in droves, but a few got through.
"I'm hit. Medic!" Screamed one of the ACAV crewmen. A vampire had latched onto his arm and was biting down hard on it. A bullet from an M 16 took care of the vampire, but another jumped on the soldier who'd just fired and bit into his shoulder.
Doc Mellon looked at the two men. Both were bleeding from puncture wounds.
"How are they, Doc?" Castle yelled as the few remaining vampires retreated.
"I think they must have some sort of anti-clotting agent in their bites. They're still bleeding, although I've bandaged them and put anti-septic on the wounds."
"Can they move and fight?"
"Hell, yes." Said the one with the bandaged arm.
"Me, too, boss." Said the other one.
Castle turned to Kate.
"What do you know about vampires? Are my men going to turn into vampires? Will they bleed out?"
Kate looked at Castle with a slight smile on her face.
"They're so beautiful. I have to follow them."
"Alexis, can you help?"
The redhead just smiled and looked wistfully at the dead vampires.
"Shit." Castle said. "Doc, stay by those two."
He checked the map again.
"Another fifty yards, we turn right and go another hundred and we're there. Move out."
They moved slowly and could see vampires in the distance, keeping up with them. A few men took shots at the vampires, but did little damage.
As they approached the far end of the library, the stacks ended and the area opened out. And before them was the biggest vampire they'd ever seen. She looked exactly like the first blonde vampire they'd seen, but she was at least eight feet tall and had muscles in places where most people didn't even have places. In her hand was what looked like a Japanese samurai sword, with a blade at least six feet long.
"You dare to invade my sanctuary and kill my children? I am Gina the Merciless and I will slay you all." She waved her sword over her head. "A thousand sorcerers worked on this blade, Decapitator, for a century. Prepare to die!"
Big Kahuna stepped forward and fired a burst into the vampire's stomach.
Gina stopped and looked down at her bleeding stomach.
Big Kahuna fired a burst into her chest and watched as she toppled over. He fired another burst into her head which spattered blood and brains everywhere. Just to be sure, he fired a few more bursts into her.
"You think so, bitch? Now you know not to bring a sword to a machine gun fight!"
"Anyone see a book?" Castle yelled.
"Right there." Someone said. "Only book here."
Sure enough, on a small table behind the dead Gina was a small book.
"This is the Book of Books?" Castle said, picking it up. "It's the size of a pocket notebook." He opened the book. "And the pages are blank. What is this?"
"Is this the Book of Books?" He asked Kate.
She nodded.
"Tha's it." She slurred.
"The pages are all blank."
"No. Gotta have magic to read it. You read it, big sorcerer?"
"Will my men turn into vampires?"
Kate looked at him and giggled.
"You may be a big sorcerer, but you're silly." She giggled some more.
"Okay, we're out of here."
They followed the map back to the stairs and up to the main floor of the library. Along the way they could see the occasional vampire in the distance, but none came near them. When they left, they saw that the bookworm was nowhere to be found.
As soon as he saw them, Pappy called them on his tank radio.
"You okay, sir?"
"I got what we came for, but I have two injured men. They'll have to go with Doc Mellon in the same track. And take down all our defensive gear. I want to get the hell out of Dodge."
They moved about ten miles and set up their night defensive position. By that time, both Kate and Alexis had come out of whatever vampire induced state they'd been in.
"Are you okay?" Castle asked Kate.
"Yes. What the hell happened back there? I hardly remember a thing."
"You and Alexis thought the vampires were beautiful and wanted to go with them."
"I'd be dead if that happened. You saved me?"
"All part of the job. But two of my men were bitten by the vampires. Are they going to turn into vampires?"
"Are they what? What kind of vampires do you have back where you come from?"
"None, actually. There are stories, but vampires are thought to be non-existent."
Kate shook her head in disbelief.
"Do you know anything about sex?"
"I know all I need to know about sex! But what about my men?"
Kate laughed.
"Little baby vampires are made by a mommy and a daddy vampire. Little orcs are made by mommy orcs and daddy orcs. And if a human bites a goblin, the goblin does not turn into a human. What silly ideas you have."
"So my men will be okay?"
"As long as they haven't lost too much blood. The anti-coagulant in their saliva will wear off in ten or fifteen minutes."
"Good to know."
"Rick, thank you for saving my life."
"My pleasure."
"There's one more thing. We'll have to go into the City of the Dead tomorrow on the route to our next stop."
Rick groaned.
"I hate to ask, but what is the City of the Dead?"
"Just what it sounds like. It's a city whose only inhabitants are ghosts."
"How dangerous are they?"
"They're incorporeal beings so they can't injure you in any way, but when they touch you, you'll vividly recall the most horrible events of your life. Most people can get through the city, if they have to, but a lot simply go mad."
"Can't we bypass it?"
"No. The only bridge across the Tyer River is there. There's none to the east. You have to go to the headwaters of the river, some seven hundred miles, to find a place shallow enough to cross. The only bridge to the west is five hundred miles away and is in the middle of orc country."
"Any ideas how to get through without going mad?"
Kate thought.
"One good thing. If you get out of the city, the madness fades in hours. So, as long as the drivers of your vehicles remain unaffected, their passengers will be okay."
"I'll need everyone in each vehicle ready to take over. What kind of symptoms do the insane show?"
"They become terrified and curl up in a ball."
"Catatonic. Okay, we can just haul the drivers out and get someone else in."
"What kind of cat?" Kate asked.
"Not a cat. The word means…Uh…you just curl up and retreat from the world. Anything else?"
"Some people say singing helps. It concentrates the mind on something else."
"So we roll past the ghosts singing dirty Army songs?"
"I know a lot of dirty songs." Kate said cheerfully.
"Princess Katherine! I never."
"You never what? I thought you understood sex."
Castle would have replied, but the crew of his track was laughing so hard, Kate would never have heard him.
They had stopped on a small rise overlooking the City of the Dead. Castle examined it through his binoculars.
"Okay, the buildings are all black, and there's a heavy bank of fog covering the place. All it needs is a sign that says "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."
"What makes you think there isn't one?" Kate asked.
"Really?"
"No. I'm just teasing you."
"At least there's a nice road leading through the place." Castle grabbed his mic. "Platoon, we're going in. As soon as we hit the road, start singing. Everybody keep their mics open so we all know we're singing. Let's go."
As soon as they got on the road, Castle began singing.
"Let Bacchus' sons be not dismayed,
"But join with me, each jovial blade,
"Come drink and sing and lend your aid,
"To help me with the chorus,
"Instead of spa we'll drink brown ale,
"And pay the reckoning on the nail,
"No man for debt shall go to jail,
"For Garryowen and glory."
As soon as they hit the fog, the ghosts began appearing. They didn't look like the ghosts the soldiers had imagined. They were grey blobs ranging in size from a few inches across to a foot or two across. But when the first one touched Castle, he had a flashback to the first time he'd been mortared and had dived into a slit trench. The person following him was blown into the trench by the blast and was shredded. His body lay, bleeding, on top of Castle, until the all clear. Even then, two men had to help get the body off of Castle and haul him out of the trench.
But Castle kept singing.
Next was what some soldiers referred to as the national anthem of Vietnam.
"We gotta get out of this place,
"If it's the last thing we ever do,
"We gotta get out of this place,
"Girl, there's a better life for me and you."
"Halt! Halt!" Someone screamed over the radio. "Our driver is fucked up."
Castle turned around and saw that the last ACAV in line had stopped.
"Platoon halt." He screamed over the radio.
"We're good, sir. We're good." Someone stood up in the track and gave a thumbs up.
That's when Castle discovered that Pappy Brown wasn't singing. He was yelling at the ghosts.
"You call yourselves fucking haunts? Bullshit. So far you ain't shown me shit. Scaring me? Not fucking close. I shit scarier than you every morning. And twice on Sunday."
As Pappy went on, the whole platoon was laughing.
TBC