The Night Approaches
Static crackled from the worn-out Pro-10 speakers as the radio played on.
In the Seoul of the twenty-first century—long after the day of ruin Nostradamus had prophesied—a bartender carefully wiped down old vinyl records with a rag inside a quaint little teahouse-bar.
The speakers roughly reproduced the voice of an aging Sinatra. Outside the windows rain fell; the dim lighting was just enough to let the sodium streetlamps spill their glow into the shop. It was the sort of peculiar place where good business would have seemed strange. Yet it possessed a certain antique charm of its own.
Ding… ding…
The wall-mounted grandfather clock began to strike eight with a dull, heavy chime. At the same moment the door opened and a man walked in.
Beneath the black coat that wrapped his entire body, the clothing that briefly showed was unmistakably a Catholic priest’s cassock. Though the Church did not forbid drink, it was rare for a devout priest to seek out a bar in person—rarer still when the man was a young silver-haired foreigner.
“Pretty rough for a spring rain.”
He spoke as he stepped inside without removing his coat. For a foreigner his Korean was astonishingly fluent and precise.
He glanced once at the bartender, then turned his eyes toward a corner seat. On a sofa screened by a potted palm that did not belong in a place like this, a middle-aged man slept with a round beret pulled low over his face.
The priest strode across and sat opposite him. The manner was closer to an outlaw’s than a cleric’s, and even without his striking appearance it would have drawn every eye in the room. Fortunately—or not—there was no one present but the old bartender and the sleeping man.
“Night is coming. This is no time to be sleeping, is it?”
As he spoke he seized the edge of the sleeping man’s table and shook it. The middle-aged man peeled off his beret, rose halfway, then dropped back into his seat.
“Well, well. What a surprise. With Korean that fluent I took you for a local. You really can’t judge a man over the phone.”
“I didn’t come here to trade small talk about our nationalities. If that’s what you want, go find a phone booth. More importantly—spit out where that bastard is. You dragged me all the way here, so he must be nearby.”
He spoke and looked out the window. Early spring rain hammered the glass as hard as any monsoon. The middle-aged man removed his hat and answered.
“He was in the area, yes. After that I lost the trail. He just cracked one egg and left.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“No. But the spawn—”
He smiled in a servile way as he said it. The silver-haired priest cut him off coldly.
“I have no interest in those. If you don’t know his whereabouts, our business ends here. I’ll be going.”
He rose and strode for the door. The man in the beret shot to his feet in alarm.
“But those others will know where he is! They’re his children, after all—no matter what anyone says!”
The priest’s long strides stopped. At the same instant the needle reached the end of the old LP and an ugly noise scraped from the speakers.
“Sly bastard.”
A pitch-black Corvette coupe slid out of the two-lane road that had become little more than a parking lot. Behind the wheel the silver-haired priest turned the car like a racer, cutting quickly through the streets.
“Bold of you. A car like this is bound to draw eyes…”
“How many times do I have to tell you it’s none of your concern? If you insist on putting something in your mouth, talk about where we’re going instead.”
He drove as he spoke. The middle-aged man forced an awkward smile and began to explain.
“It’s an illegal club converted from a warehouse at Yeonan Pier. Under the Sangdong-pa—used to be a room salon that retailed drugs. Somewhere along the way it turned into a Spawning Sanctuary…”
“Spawning Sanctuary? So there’ll be plenty of vampires. And you people just sat on your hands? That place must print money.”
“The Sangdong-pa was founded by boss Jeong Sang-dong in the early nineties. Not large, but dangerous. We’re not the police—no reason to poke them without cause.”
“Funny. You’re not afraid of vampires, yet you’re scared of a gang of thugs?”
Screeech!
Before the words had fully left his mouth the Corvette stopped in front of the warehouse. Two solidly built men stood at the entrance; black glass sealed the doorway. Parking was outside, and they even offered the courtesy of covering license plates.
“There’s a case behind the seats.”
The priest said it, opened the door, and strode out into the pouring rain.
“This one?”
The middle-aged man lifted the long bag that filled the rear seat. A black case wide enough that a child might have fit inside if it were a little broader, and heavy enough to feel as though a body were already in it. He clicked his tongue under his breath and hauled it out.
“A guitar case would have been nicer, but guitars that size are hard to find. Cello or bass—too big.”
The priest spoke and walked straight to the entrance. The two men who were clearly bodyguards stepped into his path.
“Excuse me. Invitation, please.”
“What the hell?”
The priest immediately played the clueless foreigner. The bodyguards froze in pure confusion. If Sangdong-pa soldiers could hold a conversation in English they would have been tour guides, not gangsters. They looked at each other, openly at a loss.
“Ah, fuck me. This isn’t even Itaewon and we’ve got a real Yankee. We’re screwed. Hey—you speak English?”
“I get hives just hearing the word. Call Gyeong-hyeon. He went to college—”
They never got the chance to move. The priest moved first.
Thud!
While they were still looking elsewhere he drove a fist into the man in front of him and snapped a precise side-kick into the second man’s jaw.
“Uuuugh…”
A clean crack, and both men went down. Broken teeth spilled blood that stained the concrete. The way he had dismantled two hard-looking gangsters so cleanly was far from ordinary.
“Shall we go inside, then?”
He took the case as he spoke. The middle-aged man stared in shock at the fallen guards.
“Guys who faint after a couple of hits. Nothing worth looking at.”
He said it and stepped inside. The illegal club carved out of a warehouse was a long corridor packed with rooms. Waiters wearing professional smiles stood at the entrance; the moment the two men appeared they hurried over as though ready to offer their own livers.
“Welcome. Just the two of you?”
The priest examined their uniforms at once while scanning the surroundings. The waiters flinched back at the intensity of that gaze.
“Hmm~. Not these either.”
Then one of the waiters spotted the two bodyguards collapsed beyond the semi-transparent glass.
“Ah! Chang-su hyung!”
“Wh-what?”
The smiles vanished from their faces in an instant, as though masks had been ripped away.
“You bastard!”
Crack!
The priest’s jab had already smashed into a waiter’s face. His hands were so fast that even after crushing the man’s nose completely and withdrawing the fist, the victim still stood there gaping like an idiot.
“Aaaargh!”
Only then did the waiter with the ruined nose clutch his face and scream. The others tried to surround the priest, but the narrow corridor made it nearly impossible. He barely needed to raise a hand again; soon every waiter lay sprawled amicably across the floor.
“Amazing.”
“What’s amazing is still to come. If tonight turns out to be a bust, I’ll show you just how amazing I can be—so look forward to it. Every last one of these guys is human!”
He shouted it and kicked the door open. Beyond was a larger room than the usual private booths; a big table stood in the center, and the glasses on it were filled with dark red blood.
The organization members and a few VIP guests whose intimate little banquet had just been interrupted glared at the sudden intruder.
“Who the hell are you bastards!”
“Bingo.”
The priest said it the moment he saw them. The middle-aged man started and pulled a pistol from inside his coat. It was one of the most common handguns in the world—a Colt Government .45 ACP—yet in Korea, where firearms were rare, it was a sight seldom seen.
“These sons of bitches!”
Bang!
One of the seated members half-rose; a bullet immediately buried itself in his shoulder. The languid middle-aged man turned out to possess unexpected skill, placing the shot with perfect accuracy on a flustered target.
A .45 ACP round has excellent stopping power; an enormous spray of blood fanned out behind the table. Yet the man simply stood up again as if nothing had happened. No human could have endured that and risen. The fact that he did proved he was no longer human.
“Kyaa!”
The vampires who had revealed their true natures all rose from their seats. In that same moment the priest opened the case.
“I don’t care what kind of party you’re throwing here. But the heretic who sold you that false eternal life—”
As he spoke he drew a massive rifle from the case and fired at the vampire already charging him.
BOOM!
The explosion shattered the vampire’s torso and dragged the unfortunate ones behind him into the same fate. The bullet’s power had not diminished even after punching through seven heads; it smashed the far wall.
“Lucky day.”
The priest settled the Barrett M82A1 properly into his grip. He had fired the heavy rifle like a pistol the instant it left the case and still placed every shot with deadly precision. Now he raised the enormous weapon and opened fire on the remaining vampires in earnest.
“Keeeek!”
“You son of a bitch! I’ll make you puke blood!”
The vampires charged with fighting spirit blazing, yet the priest remained calm, focused solely on shooting.
BOOM!
He poured out explosions with the detached air of a man at an amusement-park shooting gallery. Every time sparks leapt from the muzzle, vampires toppled in rows. The results were almost unbelievable for someone swinging a rifle longer than most children inside such a cramped room.
“Kyaaaaak!”
“Wh-what the hell are you doing!”
The only young man left alive among the vampires stumbled backward in terror. The priest advanced with the muzzle still leveled at him.
“Actually, thinking it over, I only need one of you left to get answers. So how about it? Where is the heretic who sold you that fake eternal life?”
He closed the distance as he spoke. The vampire retreated, hands waving frantically.
“W-wait! I don’t know anything! I just swallowed some medicine they sent down from above! At first I thought it was Bacchus!”
The priest lowered the rifle. The vampire’s relief lasted only a heartbeat; an explosion tore his arm clean off.
“Kraaaagh!”
The priest now held a Desert Eagle in his left hand and tossed the rifle back to the middle-aged man.
“Put it in the case.”
“Uh… these vampire corpses…”
“Do whatever you want. That was the deal from the start, wasn’t it, you damn rat?”
“Yes.”
The middle-aged man did not seem to mind the insult at all; if anything he looked pleased. He quickly produced a metal device from his coat. Thick vinyl packs hung from it. The moment he jammed the device into a corpse, blood began to fill the packs.
“Kuuuuugh!”
The armless vampire sat on the floor screaming. In his present state he would have welcomed the police, yet strangely—though gunshots still echoed—there was no sign of any response from outside.
“You don’t need an arm to talk, do you? Right? Next up is probably your left leg. If you don’t start speaking soon, the Action Express will leave the station. Perfect chance to test your patience, don’t you think?”
He aimed the Desert Eagle .50 Action Express at the vampire’s left thigh. Horror flooded the creature’s face.
“Y-you crazy bastard!”
The price of the curse arrived at once. Another explosion, and the left leg was shredded and severed. In the priest’s words, the Action Express was a .50-caliber special magnum round whose killing power rivaled any rifle cartridge.
“If you won’t answer my question, I can just keep draining the blood like this. Vampire. Once a human starts sucking your blood, you might feel more talkative about that eternal life of yours. Right?”
He glanced sideways as he spoke. There the middle-aged man was happily driving blood collectors into every fallen body and filling pack after pack.
In reality the pain would have been slight, but nothing blackmails better than the imagination. The vampire was already struggling merely to endure the agony of the bullets, and even as a human he had never possessed much patience.
Boasting of bravery in front of a mad priest while having his body carved into pieces went against every instinct he still owned.
“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything I know—just please stop!”
“Good. Where is he?”
“He said he was heading down to Chuncheon two weeks ago. But I don’t know if that’s true. He has no reason to trust us!”