The Old Must Be Replaced By The New [FICTOID]

Six ornate hand carved caskets sat in a row on the castle’s cobblestone courtyard.  Each remained tightly nailed shut, wrapped in silver chains.

The chains were thin, light links of jewelry commandeered from local silversmiths; it was not their tensile strength that served to bind the caskets closed but their symbolic purity.

“How much longer, captain?” the sergeant asked.

The captain eyed the castle wall.  The sun would not peek over the ramparts for another fifteen minutes. 

They dare not open the caskets before then.

They fought their way into the castle the day before, finally killing the last of the Romani defenders as the sun began to set.

Night was falling as they raced into the sepulcher -- no time to complete their mission but enough to use the backup plan.

They wrapped the caskets in the silver chains and hastily nailed them shut.

Once they completed that task they dragged the caskets into the courtyard.

The bullet riddled bodies of the Romani served as a final guard of honor…or dishonor, depending on one’s point of view.

The captain and his men stood anxious guard through the night, their MP40 submachine guns loaded with individually handmade rounds specifically designed for this mission:  Hollow point silver bullets willed with garlic infused holy salt water, capped with a hardened ash wood point.

They would serve against all foes, natural and supernatural.

From inside the caskets the captain heard frantic rustling like a pack of rabid rats trying to claw their way to freedom.  He glanced at the ramparts then checked his watch.  Five more minutes.

Those three hundred seconds seemed to pass as slowly as three hundred years.  The captain’s men nervously cradled their weapons, keeping the muzzles trained on the caskets.

A brilliant glare of light crested the ramparts.  The captain nodded to the sergeant who moved forward with the specially trained casket squad.

Six soldiers pried nails loose from the first casket while the sergeant stood ready with a bolt cutter.

As sunlight fell on the first casket, the sergeant clipped the chain.

The female vampire inside -- young at only two centuries -- flung the lid aside to escape only to shriek in agony as the bright sunlight blistered her cadaverous skin.

The captain fire a single shot from his Luger through her forehead, blowing out the back of her skull and temporarily stunning her.

This gave the staking squad their chance to lunge forward and pound an ash wood stake through her heart then chop her head off with a sharpened gravedigger’s spade.

They repeated this with the next casket, but by the third the surviving vampires realized the fate awaiting them and struggled to keep the lids closed.

No matter.  A burst from an MP40 and the grievously wounded vampire inside released its hold.  The soldiers flung back the lid back, another burst incapacitated the b urning vampire, then the staking squad finished the job.

They saved the count for the last, figuring it better to wait for full sunlight.

The count tried to escape by changing into a bat, but the brilliant sunlight charred and cracked his wings.  He fell hard to the cobblestones, returning to his once-human form.

Three soldiers riddled his body with full magazines from my sub machine guns and as the count writhed in agony, the captain put three shots in his skull at point blank range.

Only then did the staking squad rush in to drive a stake through his heart before decapitating him.

The soldiers paused, then relaxed, their mission accomplished.

They dragged the caskets and the now crumbling bodies outside the castle, drenching them in petrol before setting them ablaze.

Satisfied, the captain ordered his men down the hill to their swastika marked truck.

In 1939 there was room for only one species of human monsters on earth.

© Buzz Dixon