Jaxon was tired when I next met with him. The entire team had started their morning with a long distance run. As always, good cardio seemed to be very important to him. After the run, they worked on hand-to-hand combat, and completed their morning at the shooting range.
This isn’t anything new to the team. Every member spends countless hours in training. If they aren’t fighting, you can bet they’re busy training to fight. Most of them don’t mind the long hours. They are working hard on skills that will save their life, or the lives of their teammates.
“So, I spoke to Snake Charmer.”
Wow, I’m shocked you were able to track him down. You must have some important friends.
“I’ve been meeting some interesting people, that’s for sure. He said you smacked him over the head and then drew on Scalp Hunter.”
Yeah, that’s true.
“Can you tell me why?”
He was acting like an asshole. I mean, I could have just radioed in to Hardin and taken over his team, but he never would have respected me. By proving that I could take both of them out let them know what I was capable of. My actions made me credible.
“You wanted to intimidate him so he would follow your orders?”
Not at all: I wanted to prove to him I was legitimate. He didn’t believe in me; he thought I was a joke. I showed them my reputation was deserved and that I had even more right to be in El Paso than they did.
“What if one of them had shot you?”
I’ve been shot before.
“Yes, I guess you have. Well, what was it like working with highly trained fighting men?”
I prefer working with the Regulators. Don’t get me wrong: those guys have skills, and if I needed to rescue a hostage, or take down a terrorist, they’d be the guys I wanted with me, but I fight monsters. I fight nasty, biting, and scratching, monsters that can disembowel a man with a simple backhand. I want the boys that are most experienced with fighting monsters at my back. It just so happens that my team is probably the most experienced in the world right now.
Guys like Scalp Hunter and Snake Charmer aren’t exactly trained for the kinds of things we take on. To be honest, we aren’t always trained for the kinds of things we take on. However, we adapt quickly. We haven’t been rigorously trained in the regular methods of fighting. We make our own rules. Sometimes it looks like we’re bumbling, but that’s the thing, we go in loose and adapt to whatever jumps out at us from the closet.
“So basically, they are good for real life threats, but the Regulators are good for supernatural threats that don’t follow the normal routines of men?”
There ya go.
“Okay, I’m very anxious to find out what happened after Scalp Hunter and Snake Charmer were extracted from the rooftop.”
Immediately after the helicopter took off, I radioed to Dudley. I wanted to see how things were going for him.
“And how were things going?”
Excellent, those guys had managed to pull off one extraction after another. Plus, they had collected their own supply of wooden bullets, courtesy a helicopter drop off arranged by Hardin. It was also a relief to hear they hadn’t run into any more booby traps, but I was pretty sure there were still plenty of traps out there, just waiting to be sprung. I told him to be careful and to be ready to back me up if I called him.
“To back you up?”
Yes, I had a feeling things were coming to a close with my vampire stalker. The reason I felt that way was due to the nature of the trap. All the other traps were zombie traps. We touched a doorknob, and zombies came after us. This trap, however, was a vampire trap. The hotel was a nest.
I figured this trap was more important to her than the others because of the vampire children. Also, I put myself in the mind of a hunter and realized that if I set a trap, I would want to see the results when it was sprung. For all I knew, she might want to check on the vampires in the nest. They didn’t seem keen on leaving the hotel, so somebody must have been bringing them victims.
I was guessing, or maybe I was hoping…I don’t know, but I was guessing or hoping she would turn up before dawn to see how things had gone down, and dawn was only a couple of hours away.
“So what’s next on the agenda?” Nick asked.
“We prepare a little welcome home surprise,” I answered.
Nick followed me back into the hotel and into one of the rooms. I had left a couple of the vampires alive.
“What are you planning?” Nick asked.
“I’m planning on setting my own trap,” I answered.
“They’re just kids. We should put them out of their misery,” Nick said.
“They stopped being kids when my stalker turned them into monsters,” I answered. “My goal is to stop her from doing this to anyone else, but in order to do that, I need to get my freaking hands on her.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” I answered, “but I’m out of options, and she has a friend of mine captive. So unless you have a better way of bringing her in, hush up and grab a hold of its legs.”
To give Nick some credit, he actually stopped grumbling and picked up the vampire’s legs. We carried the paralyzed vampire to the roof and went back to get the next one. Once we had both vampires on the roof, I wrapped their feet up with some rope out of my backpack, and tossed them off the edge.
They fell about ten feet on each side of the building; the trap was set.
“Can you explain the details of the trap for me?”
Sure, I took the two remaining paralyzed vampires, and hung them off two different sides of the roof. Across the street from each hanging vampire was a tall building of the type my stalker seemed to prefer, since she travels by rooftop.
My hope was she’d swing by before dawn to see what had happened with her booby-trap. When she approached the building, she would see one of the paralyzed vampires. If she circled the building, she’d see both of them.
After that, she’d have to make a choice. She could rescue the vampires or she could let them burn in the sun.
“Wouldn’t she know it was a trap?”
Yeah, it was a pretty obvious trap, but if she wanted to save those vampires from burning in the sun, she’d need to do something anyway.
All Nick and I had to do was wait.
“Were you certain sunlight would kill them?”
Yeah, my stalker never bothered me during the daytime. Also, Hardin said earlier that sunlight would take them out.
So that was that. We just hunkered down beneath the lip of the roof and waited to see if she’d show. It was shortly before dawn when she finally made her appearance. Nick noticed some movement on the side he was watching.
“Jax,” he said. “I think I saw something.”
“What do you think you saw?” I asked.
“I saw movement on the building across the street,” he answered.
I rapidly crawled over to him and looked over the lip of the roof.
“I don’t see anything,” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Just keep watching,” he answered.
After what felt like a long time later, I finally saw her. She was in between what looked like brick support columns, about midway up the building across the street. She had also changed her clothes. For some reason, she was wearing a white tutu and unitard. It was an odd choice of clothes, to be sure, but I doubt vampires are very much in touch with fashion.
She was pretty much level with the vampire we had dangling off of our roof, and she was making a bunch of odd clicking sounds in its direction. I could see the black drool dripping off of her chin.
I removed my tomahawk from my belt.
Nick readied his MP7.
All she had to do was get close enough for me to pounce on her.
I expected her to jump to our roof, but instead she crawled up to the top of her own building and crouched on the edge. We watched as she paced back and forth. Suddenly, she jumped to a neighboring building and then proceeded to hop from building to building until she had made a complete circle around the hotel.
We waited patiently and merely watched.
She knew it was a trap. That much was obvious when she slammed her fist down on the edge of the roof and sent pieces of brick down onto the street below. She was frustrated, but she wasn’t taking the bait. She didn’t want to walk into danger.
We waited silently.
She began to pace back and forth once again. She examined our rooftop from every conceivable angle, but she never once saw us because we had moved away from the lip and ducked low under a billboard sign.
Dawn was less than an hour away.
She finally made her move.
The leap carried her from her building, across the street, all the way to the top of our building. If she’d stopped to sniff for us, she would have found us easily. However, she seemed to be extremely nervous and instead of checking her surroundings, she immediately went to the rope and began to pull the helpless vampire back onto the rooftop.
We made our move.
Nick unloaded on her, and just as she turned to face him, I buried my tomahawk deep into her chest. She reacted violently, grabbed the collar of my vest, and slammed my head onto the edge of the rooftop, before dropping the rope holding the immobilized vampire and rushing towards Nick.
It took me just a moment to clear the cobwebs from my head and shake the stars out of my vision. I unloaded a burst from my MP7 right before she could get her hands on him. She arched her back in pain and spun in my direction.
My tomahawk was still embedded in her chest. She grabbed the handle, wrenched it free, and threw it back at me. Much to her surprise, I caught the weapon by the wooden handle and threw it right back at her.
The blade of the tomahawk embedded itself into her collarbone, and slashed open her carotid artery. The black blood began to gush forth, and she screamed so loud I had to cover my ears.
When she finally stopped, I noticed to my dismay that her jaw had elongated and filled with fangs. She was laughing at me as she pulled the weapon out of her collarbone and held it in her hand. I drilled her with another full auto blast from my machine gun. The impact spun her in circles, and Nick connected a solid, crunching, blow, to her spine with his fireman’s axe.
I had no doubt that we owed our success to the wooden bullets. They weren’t bringing her down, but she was definitely getting weaker.
The bullet holes were not healing, and black blood was leaking freely from the wounds. Her neck was still gushing, and she was trying to staunch the flow of blood with her hand as she ran away from us to the edge of the roof.
She hesitated, as if she was worried about making the jump in her injured state.
“Bastard,” she said in a low voice, as she turned to face me.
I shot her again.
She ran towards me, and Nick immediately started shooting her in the back, but she wasn’t stopping. When she was close enough, she swung my own weapon at me, but I managed to duck under the blade, and slash out with my folding knife. She was getting slower. My blade was able to sever the connective tissue of her left arm, and she dropped my weapon as she ran past me towards the metal door of the building.
She was still scary fast.
The metal door slammed shut behind her with an extremely loud bang.
“Are you hurt?” I asked Nick.
“She never touched me,” he answered. “How’s your head?”
“Hurts like a bitch,” I answered.
“It’s no wonder,” Nick said. “You’re bleeding pretty badly, probably ruined your cap.”
“I’ll worry about it later,” I said as I rushed towards the metal door.
She’d jammed it into the frame, and we wasted precious moments figuring out how to get through. In the end, Nick’s fireman’s axe was able to get in between the door and the frame, and pry it open. I made a mental note to stop picking on his lame weapon.
The bodies in the hallway had been disturbed.
“I think we’re in trouble,” I whispered to Nick.
“Fuck that,” he answered. “We’ve got this bitch on the run. Let’s go finish this shit.”
“Get behind me,” I ordered.
Fortunately, Nick listened. It was then that I heard the laughter. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It seemed to be echoing around the entire floor.
Nick and I both froze in the hallway.
The situation was bad. I didn’t want to get stuck in an empty hotel with a bloodthirsty vampire without an avenue of escape. The situation would have been so much better out on the street where we could get away from her if things went bad. I had the distinct feeling I was a fly walking right into a spider’s web.
“I don’t get it,” Nick said. “Despite her wounds, she’s still a bad ass. Why’s she hiding?”
I didn’t answer. Nick talks a lot when he’s nervous. It’s best to just ignore him, because nothing else really makes him shut up.
I heard a noise coming from one of the rooms, and I rushed forward with my MP7 in a ready position. I kicked open the door to find my suspicions confirmed. The vampire was feeding off of the corpses of all the vampire children we had killed.
She had used their blood to jumpstart her healing.
As soon as I broke down the door, she stopped her feeding, and hurled the corpse at me. I ducked out of the way, but Nick wasn’t so lucky. The impact took him off his feet. I unloaded an entire magazine on the vampire as she streaked around the room in an attempt to avoid taking too much damage.
She was screaming so loud I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn’t ease up for even a moment, or I ran the risk of her healing completely. The cut to her carotid artery had already closed over, but her skin was a sickly pale color—and that’s saying a lot, because she was already grayish to begin with. There were even dark circles under her eyes, causing her face to have an almost hollow appearance. She definitely wasn’t in top shape, but she was still very dangerous.
In less than a second, she had grabbed a hold of me once again. This time I was ready for her, and as soon as she was close enough, I flashed out my folding knife and opened up her neck. She reacted violently, and threw me across the room into Nick, who was just getting to his feet.
The black blood was spraying everywhere as she raced past us towards the stairs.
We collected ourselves as quickly as we could, and followed after her. The only problem was that in addition to my head wound, I now had a pronounced limp that was slowing me down considerably. I tore something in my knee when I slammed into Nick, and the stabbing pain traveling up my thigh told me it was probably serious.
I didn’t have time to heal myself. If I took the time, we’d lose her. Then she would heal herself completely, and come back for us at a different time. It was now or never. I took the stairs two at a time, just trying to close the distance.
It wasn’t until the final flight of stairs that my knee gave out entirely, and I tumbled the rest of the way to the landing. I came up on my good leg immediately, and wiped the blood away from my eyes with my free hand.
Nick was staring at me in amazement.
I tried to take another step, but I only fell down again.
Things were looking bleak. I had lost the vampire. I had no idea where to look for her outside of the building.
Nick was trying to help me back up, and restrain me, at the same time when Dudley radioed in.
“Jaxon, you there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m here.”
“Are you still hunting after that vampire chick?”
“No,” I answered. “I blew it. We had her wounded, and I screwed up and lost her.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Dudley. “I think I just found her lair.”
“It’s her nest, asshole,” Nick said after clicking his earpiece.
“What?” Dudley asked.
“Never mind,” I interrupted. “Give me directions.”
Dudley was on a street called Baltimore. It was pretty close to UTEP: that’s University of Texas at El Paso. I’m sure I mentioned it before, but it’s the local college. I actually graduated from there.
“How did Dudley find the nest?”
Well, they were seriously kicking ass on the extractions. They had pretty much cleared out the remaining survivors while we were busy fighting vampires. The calls for help had become almost non-existent— for lack of anything better to do while they waited for Hardin to find another survivor—they were just sort of heading down Mesa in order to shorten the distance between us, in case I needed backup.
As they neared UTEP, Hardin finally found more survivors. Luckily enough, the team was pretty close to their location, and they went immediately. The house was pretty old, but it was well maintained. A lot of the area by Baltimore is part of the historic district.
Anyway, Dudley, and company, went inside and searched the darkened house, but they didn’t find anything. At least, not until Javie walked into the dining room, and almost fell through the floor when he stepped on a rug.
They moved the rug out of the way, and saw that a hole had been dug about ten feet into the ground. In this hole were seven survivors that had been chained to the wall, four women, and three men. The vampire had been feeding on them. There were also about five corpses she had drained completely. The corpses were still chained to the wall.
From my understanding, one of the remaining survivors wormed her hand free, and started going through the pockets of the corpses near her. She was lucky enough to find a cell phone that had internet access, and sent out a call for help.
Georgie was trying to break the chains as Dudley was telling me the story. I ordered Georgie to stop trying to free the survivors.
“Why?” Dudley asked.
“Because the vampire is wounded, and she’s probably heading your way. I want you and Georgie to jump down into the pit and pretend you are two of her captives. Have Javie and Merrick wait in one of the bedrooms.”
“What do we do if she shows up?”
“Fill her with holes,” I answered.
After I was done talking to Dudley, I reached into my backpack and grabbed some duct tape. Then I used my tomahawk to chop up a little end table from the lobby. I shoved my kneecap back into the correct position, placed two pieces of the end table on either side, and taped everything up. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it immobilized my knee just enough to allow me to move.
“You shoved your knee cap into the correct position? Didn’t that hurt?”
It hurt like a bitch, but it takes time to heal, and time was something we didn’t have. I didn’t want to leave the team to face an angry vampire while I nursed a boo-boo. I still had a nasty limp, and my leg was shooting out sparks of pain, but I made it all the way to the loose window board and outside to the rear of the building.
The Jeep was parked across the street and down the road a bit.
I was using Nick’s shoulder for support as we came around the building and started to cross the street. There were zombies there. They must have been attracted by all the noise but were unable to pinpoint exactly where the noise had come from, so they were just wandering around the street.
This is the same mistake I kept making. I got so caught up in the vampires that I forgot about the zombies, and every time I did that, it came around and tried to bite me on the ass. There weren’t enough zombies coming towards us to freak me out, but I was far from top condition.
It was a little bit funny to see Nick’s eyes go wide as he saw them rushing towards us. I would have laughed, but my knee was really killing me, and it sort of felt like it had slipped out of the correct position again.
Both of us began to fire on them as they came nearer and nearer. I didn’t even think about using my knife or tomahawk. There was no way I’d be able to go hand-to-hand with my leg jacked up the way that it was.
I fired and fired, but then the worst possible thing that could have happened, did.
One of the zombies screamed.
It was a real nasty one too. For whatever reason, all of the skin beneath its nose was missing, and it seemed to have a permanent smile, as it looked at me and screamed. Both Nick and I stopped firing for just a moment as we waited to see just how much trouble that scream was going to bring.
We heard answering screams echo around the city in response; a lot of answering screams.
We needed to get the hell out of there, and we needed to do it fast. The current zombies were bad enough. If mobs of them showed up before we made ourselves scarce, we would have to waste time losing them in the Jeep before we could meet up with Dudley, or we’d end up trapping ourselves in the house.
The problem with taking time to lose large mobs of zombies is that my nephew, and the rest of the team, were waiting to ambush a hungry vampire, and they were going to need our backup.
Over the moans and screams, I told Nick to go get the Jeep while I handled our noisy followers. I figured we would be able to leave the area faster if I stopped slowing him down, and allowed him to bring the Jeep to me instead.
“Dude,” Nick said. “Are you serious? How are you going to fight with your leg all fucked up?”
“It’s not a debate,” I replied.
Reluctantly, he left me. Thankfully, he could move really, really, fast for such a big guy, which was good for him, since the zombies were only about fifteen feet away. I was shooting and shooting, but I wasn’t fast enough to take them all out before they closed the distance.
When the first one reached me, I smacked it away with the barrel of my weapon just as the second zombie grabbed a hold of my shoulders, and attempted to bite through the bite proof collar of my vest.
I responded instantly by dropping my MP7—it was stuck between our bodies—and reaching for the Sig on my side. I pulled the pistol quickly, shoved the barrel under the zombie’s chin, and popped off a shot straight to its brain.
As that zombie fell, the first zombie I had smacked away, dove for my legs and wrenched my bad knee. The pain was incredible, and I think I even screamed out as I fell to the ground. Somehow, I managed to work my left hand under its cold and clammy chin, and pushed its head back away from my neck. After that, it was easy enough to put a bullet through its forehead.
The next zombie, literally, dove from about five feet away and landed on my chest. He was trying to bite into my stomach, but my bite suit prevented penetration, and I was able to fire a round through its temple.
After that, there were more zombies trying to pile on top of me. The situation royally sucked for me because my wounded leg made getting back to my feet extremely difficult, and every time I tried, another zombie dove on top of me.
I think there were about four of them smothering me when I heard the sweet rumble of the Jeep, and the muffled shots of Nick’s MP7. After pushing the corpses off of me, and using the Jeep to get back to my feet, I became aware of Nick screaming at me to hurry.
I really didn’t want to look back down the road and see what he was so upset about, but damned if I couldn’t help myself. One glance was all I needed. The road was filled with zombies, and the gang was getting bigger, and bigger.
I dove into the Jeep as Nick hit the gas pedal.
The zombies were so close a bunch of them were actually able to grab a hold of the Jeep and begin to pull their decaying bodies inside, before I managed to sit up in the passenger seat and fire off a bunch of headshots.
The worst had happened. We had a horde of hundreds of zombies following us, and we’d need to waste precious time losing them before we could meet up with the rest of the team. Nick was laughing.
“What the hell are you laughing about?” I asked.
“I totally saved your ass back there.”
“As opposed to all the times I saved your ass?” I retorted.
“When did you save my ass?” Nick asked. “I’d like to hear when you saved my ass, because that’s news to me. Maybe you’re just upset that you actually had to rely on someone other than yourself. You saved my ass? Bitch please! I’m the hero in this vehicle.”
I was ignoring him. Somewhere in the middle of his rant, I looked down at my leg and realized that everything below the kneecap was twisted and bent at the wrong angle. I had no idea where the pieces of wood I’d been using to keep my leg immobilized had fallen, but they certainly weren’t stuck to my leg anymore. All that remained was a wad of stretched out duct tape.
The worst thing about it was it didn’t hurt.
I simply couldn’t feel a thing from my kneecap all the way down to the tips of my toes. I wasn’t sure which was worse, my seriously fucked up leg, or the battalion of zombies twenty feet behind us.
“Can you heal that leg?” Nick asked, when he saw how bad the damage was.
“Yeah, but it will take time, and I need water, or something natural,” I replied.
“What do you mean something natural?”
“Something living, like a plant, or grass,” I answered.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, I think I might be going into shock or something. I’m not sure.”
“How can you not be sure if you are going into shock?” Nick asked.
“I’m not sure because I never went into shock before, you douche bag! Have you ever gone into shock?”
“No, but if I was going into shock, you can bet I’d know it,” he snarled back at me.
“Whatever, just figure out a way to lose the zombies. We don’t have time for this shit. We need to meet up with the team.”
Nick started to laugh.
“What?” I asked.
“You just sit back and rest your pretty little head. I got this shit covered. I know where to go, maybe you’d know as well, if you ever left the Westside. “
I honestly didn’t have the energy to waste arguing with him. I didn’t have much energy to do anything, other than attempt to keep my limp body from sliding off the seat onto the floorboards of the Jeep. The stars that were starting to dance around in my eyes told me that very soon I was going fail at that attempt as well.
In retrospect, I’m glad I passed out as Nick flew around the city, because what I actually managed to see of his driving was nothing short of terrifying. He would charge straight at a car parked on the side of the road, and wait until the very last second before he veered around it. I couldn’t count how many times he bounced over a curb. If I hadn’t buckled myself into the Jeep, I’m pretty sure I would have bounced out.
I’m not exactly sure what he did, but I came to when we began to slow down. I realized that he had somehow gotten behind the horde of zombies. I watched with heavy eyes as they ran up the street and away from us.
I wanted to ask what was going on, but Nick motioned for me to be quiet as he reversed the Jeep into some sort of enclosed area. After that, he got out of the Jeep, and closed some sort of metal door on a track, and we were hidden from the street.
“You got any quarters?” he asked when he finally came back.
When I didn’t answer, he snorted through his nose and vanished. Less than five minutes later, I felt hot water spraying down on me from above. The water was invigorating. Instantly the dancing stars in my vision vanished, and I was able to sit up straight.
“I used to work at one of these places,” Nick said. “I managed to jam it on ‘spray’ so you can fix your leg. You look like hell.”
I ignored Nick as I pulled up the leg of my pants, and exposed my purple and black knee to the spraying water. It hurt even worse than the first time, but I shoved my kneecap into the correct position as I straightened out my leg under the water.
I’m pretty sure my kneecap would have placed itself in the correct position if I’d simply waited, but I was in a rush to speed things along. Still, the pain of the slow healing process was making me grit my teeth.
“Is that shit working?” Nick asked.
“Nick,” I growled through clenched teeth, “one more word, and I’ll to shoot you.”
I waited only a few moments. I wanted to get a grip on the pain before I collected my thoughts.
“How long were we driving around?” I asked.
Nick did not answer.
“NICK!” I shouted. “How long were we driving around?”
“You told me not to talk asshole,” Nick said.
“What are you, twelve?” I asked while he started laughing.
“Damn, you’re a moody bastard,” Nick said. “We were only driving around for like five minutes. I told you not to worry.”
He’d lost them in five minutes. I could barely believe it, but the lack of light coming through the open spaces around the door confirmed it was indeed not yet daylight outside.
There was still time to meet up with Dudley before the vampire got there. I mean seriously, how fast could an injured vampire move?
Nah, don’t answer that question. It’s not really important. What is important is how fast we tore out of that carwash the second after I pulled some metal brackets off the wall and attempted to tape them against my leg. I was hoping they’d last a bit longer than the wooden table pieces, but I wouldn’t have bet any money on it.
“Your leg isn’t fixed yet?” Nick asked.
“Do you think my kneecap is normally the size of a grapefruit?”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s pretty fucking bad, dumbass,” I answered. “Not as bad as it was, but that’s sort of relative I think.”
“Will you be able to walk on it?”
“I think I will be able to limp on it. Everything seems to be in the correct place, but I doubt the connective tissue has gotten a real firm grip. Then again, I’m not a doctor, so how should I know?”
“Maybe you should sit this one out. I can take up your slack.”
“You think so?” I asked. “You think you can do some of the things I did in that hotel? They ought to write songs about my awesomeness. I doubt they would do the same for you though. Nothing really song worthy about hiding out in the Camino Real.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was plotting. I was devising a plan that would allow me to destroy all my enemies, and for fuck’s sake, how the hell do you close the top on this thing? I’m freezing my ass off.”
Fortunately, I hadn’t even noticed how cold it was until he started complaining. Cold weather didn’t seem to bother me much anymore. Once he pointed it out, I realized that it was cold, but it still didn’t bother me much.
The cold air wasn’t slowing him down any. The man was hauling ass. It’s a really nerve-wracking experience, being in a vehicle with that guy when he’s in a hurry, but I wasn’t about to complain. He was making excellent time. The sky was just starting to brighten up when we finally made a wild left turn on Mesa. You would have thought Nick would need to slow down somewhat, and pick a course through all the abandoned cars on the street, but he didn’t.
Instead, he floored it. He slammed the brakes. He shoved cars out of his way, and he even jumped the curb and tore off on some sidewalk when he got frustrated.
“I’ve always wanted to do this shit,” was all he said when he caught me staring at him.
On the plus side, he had at least begun to lighten up and relax a bit. He seemed just a little too tense when we were back at the hotel fighting the vampires. I was beginning to get a little worried he wouldn’t be able to handle the stress.
It seemed as if he’d somehow found a way to adjust.
“Are you gonna kill this bitch, or are you going to try and capture her?”
“I’m going to kill her,” I answered sharply.
“If you kill her, how are you going to find out anything about Kingsley?” Nick asked.
I didn’t have an answer for that. I hadn’t even thought about it, and now that I was, I still didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t too sure we would be able to capture her. She was scary tough. If we went in with anything less than lethal intent, she’d probably tear us apart.
In the end, I had to go with extreme violence. If the opportunity to ask questions arose, I’d take advantage of it, but I was by no means expecting that opportunity to arise. It wasn’t like she was exactly talkative whenever we got up close and personal.
“If you weren’t going to get any information out of her about Kingsley, what were you going to do to find him?”
Tear the damn city apart.
I didn’t doubt him for an instant. There’s nothing about the man that would even lead me to believe that he was being anything less than brutally honest. His dedication to his friends has no bounds. There simply isn’t enough danger in the entire world that could make him give up until his friend was safe and sound.
It’s hard not to respect him even more.
“What happened when you got to the house on Baltimore?”
We drove through a nice park, and stopped right next to where Dudley had left his Jeep. The idea was to not let the vampire know we were waiting for her to show, so neither of the Jeeps were directly in front of the house. It wasn’t like we had hidden them extremely well, but dawn had arrived, and we didn’t have time to fuck with it. The first rays of sunlight were peeking over the mountain and repelling the darkness away for yet another day.
I was betting she’d be in such a hurry to find a quiet and dark hiding place that she wouldn’t even notice the two Jeeps.
I used Nick for support as we moved hurriedly through the park, across the street, and to the front yard of the house in which we were setting our trap.
Maybe I was just imagining things, but the house felt sinister. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. There was something evil in that house, something that shouldn’t be there. I don’t know how else to describe it. The house didn’t want us to enter.
I think Nick felt it too. He came to an abrupt halt the second he stepped foot into the yard. Yeah, I’m positive he felt it. The house was a place of pain and death.
Then, we heard the muffled thumps of silenced automatic fire coming from inside.
I was the first one in despite my wounded leg. At first, I saw almost nothing. All the windows had been blackened out with a dark paint.
Then, I heard a vampire screaming.
I also heard Georgie screaming.
I was too late. Somehow, despite her injuries, the vampire had beaten me to the house. I hobbled in the direction of the scream and saw the shoved aside rug. I heard more silenced gunfire.
As soon as I approached the pit, the vampire leaped out. She was covered in bullet holes but her throat had closed once again. I watched as her face registered shock at my being in her lair, and then anger that I had discovered her hiding place.
I slammed my tomahawk straight down on the top of her head.
In response, she gave me an open handed slap that—even though I managed to partially deflect it with my arm—still sent me sailing across the room. My arm was sprained from the blow, but fortunately I managed to not land on my bad leg.
“I’ll kill you,” she growled as she followed me across the room with my tomahawk jutting from her skull.
I responded by drilling her in the chest with my MP7. Then Nick appeared, and opened fire as well. Dudley was slowly climbing out of the pit. He looked injured, but he also began to fire upon the vampire.
She twisted and turned under the storm of wooden bullets, but she still wouldn’t go down. Instead, she leapt to the ceiling and began to roll around on it as we pelted her and pelted her. I’m not sure when Javie and Merrick arrived on the scene, but Javie began to shoot at the windows.
It took but a second to realize just how great of an idea he had, and I ordered Nick to join him.
“Which windows?” Nick asked as he avoided a clawed hand.
“All of them,” I answered.
The room was filling up with smoke and dust from the bullets tearing up the walls and ceiling, when a beam of sunlight finally entered the room and the screams of the vampire came to an abrupt stop. Then we heard the loud whack of a body hitting the tiled floor. It was hard to see through all the dust, and my eyes were beginning to water, so I couldn’t make out where the vampire had fallen.
“Did we get her?” Dudley asked.
“I’m not sure. I can’t find her.”
The soft tapping on the back of my shoulder should have alarmed me, but for some reason I thought it was one of my teammates.
It was the vampire. She was smiling at me and dangling my tomahawk by the blade between two of her fingers. Somehow, she had managed to find the one patch of shadow in the entire room and was safe and sound.
For the moment…
I reached out with all my might, and grabbed her by the throat while at the same time shoving her against the wall. My actions had the desired effect, and she never noticed I had dropped my MP7, and flicked out my folding knife.
She easily removed my hand from around her neck, but the look on her face as my knife opened her throat was priceless.
The blood began to gush, and I was able to slash her neck a few more times before she was finally able to overcome the shock of my attack, and kicked me across the room.
She didn’t even try to advance on me. She didn’t get a chance. Dudley had begun shooting out the windows behind her, and for the first time, she kissed the sunlight.
The effects were less than impressive.
She didn’t burst into flames. She didn’t roll up into a ball of agony and simply burn away. She just sort of melted. Nothing incapacitating, nothing like that at all, just think of nasty sunburn, and multiply it by about a thousand.
Her flesh did bubble, and crisp, and smoke did rise from the exposed flesh, but I was pretty disappointed that she didn’t explode.
Well, on second thought, she did sort of explode. She exploded right out of the room and down the hallway to what seemed to be the bedrooms.
“Did you see that shit?” Dudley asked.
“Yeah, I saw it. Where does that hallway lead?”
“It leads to the bedrooms, but which one did she enter?”
Even through the dust I saw what he was talking about. There were at least five rooms at the end of the hallway, but only one of them had a shattered door.
“Let’s finish this,” I said to no one in particular.
I began to slowly walk towards the hallway when Nick started shouting.
“We got company,” Nick said. “Lots and lots of company.”
Right after he said that, I heard the moans. Fortunately none of them were screaming yet, but that was only a matter of time. They tended to be a bunch of noisy bastards whenever something aroused their curiosity.
“Hold them off,” I shouted back. “Don’t let them get into the house.”
“I’m on it,” Nick said. Then he and Javie began firing out the windows at the zombies flocking towards us.
“Dudley,” I said. “You’re with me and... and...where the hell is Georgie?”
I was beginning to panic. Both Dudley and Georgie were in that pit and only Dudley had emerged. I didn’t waste a moment limping to the edge of the hole. When I got there, he almost shot me in the face.
Georgie was fine. In fact, he didn’t seem to have a mark on him. I would have laughed, but the moment really wasn’t there.
“Georgie,” I said. “Stop being a pussy and do something useful. Get those survivors out of those chains, and do it now.”
I’m pretty sure he nodded, but I didn’t wait around. I immediately set off towards the room with the broken down door. Dudley was right behind me, and I almost jumped out of my skin when he started tapping me on the shoulder.
When I turned around I saw that he was handing me my tomahawk, I breathed a sigh of relief and muttered my thanks. I was going to need that particular weapon.
When we entered the room with Merrick, the stink of vampire hit us like a slap. It’s a nasty smell I can’t even begin to describe. It’s not as bad as the smell of zombies, but it’s close.
The dark room seemed to be deserted, but the smears of blood along the walls gave it a sort of lived in appearance. Merrick began to sniff around the floor, and I walked over for a closer inspection of what she had found.
She was sniffing at some drops of some type of liquid, but in the darkness I couldn’t tell if the liquid was vampire blood or human blood. Dudley had walked past us towards the bathroom as I studied the drops, and he returned from the empty room with a confused look on his face.
I pulled out my flashlight and shined the beam on the drops. The bright light lit the floor up in a wide circle, and I was able to see the black drops of vampire blood that Merrick had been sniffing at.
I got down on all fours and searched for more of the vampire’s blood. I found what I was looking for on the side of the bed.
“Is she under the fucking bed?” Dudley asked as he backed away.
In order to answer his question, I grabbed a corner of the bed and flipped the entire thing out of the way. There was another hole beneath it. It was barely wide enough for me to fit through.
“Are we going down there after her?” Dudley asked.
“I guess so,” I answered.
“I need to find another line of work,” Dudley mumbled.
I didn’t respond. In fact, I agreed with him.
I jumped down the hole and made sure to land on my good leg. All in all, I’d say it was about eight feet deep and it opened up into an 8’x8’ room with a ceiling made up of many different sizes of wooden boards so low I had to duck my head. Dudley almost landed on top of me when he jumped down. As I looked around the room, I noticed that the dirty plywood walls had bloody smears all over them.
Merrick began to bark from the top of the hole.
“Maybe we should take her with us,” Dudley said. “She can track the vampire.”
“No,” I answered. “I don’t want Merrick getting too close; she might get hurt. Besides, I can follow the vampire’s trail.”
“Well, where are you going to start? This room has no exits.”
He was right about that. There were no clear passages leading out of the room. I was thinking there had to be a hidden door somewhere so I aimed the beam of my flashlight downwards and started searching the dirt floor.
It took awhile, but I finally found a drop of black blood, and two feet away from that one, I found another one. The blood drops led me across the room to a corner with a hairline crack in the wood. I tapped on the area near the crack and was rewarded with a hollow echo.
I then punched the area and the piece broke free, revealing a tight hidden passage in the corner of the wall. Dudley and I were going to have to crawl through it. It wasn’t a very pleasant notion.
The little tunnel led another eight feet under the house and we emerged into a room very similar to the one we had just left, complete with a wooden ceiling consisting of different sized boards and plywood walls. The only exception is that this room held a coffin.
Dudley let out a deep breath when he emerged from the tunnel and saw the wooden coffin. We had come to the end of the line. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Also, there was the presence of evil. It felt wrong to be in that room, but I couldn’t leave. I had a job to do. I had a duty to perform, and I wasn’t leaving until accounts were settled.
I quietly approached the coffin. I could no longer hear Merrick barking from the bedroom. I could no longer hear the muffled sound of gunshots as Nick, and Javie, kept the approaching zombies from entering the house.
The moment seemed to drag on and on. The coffin was by no means modern. It was one of those old western style jobs: bare wood, and cheaply made. It looked as if it would crumble if I stomped on the lid. That’s when I noticed the hinges. This coffin wasn’t the kind that gets nailed shut. It had hinges on the side so it could be opened and closed.
I held my breath as I reached out and grabbed a hold of the corner of the lid. I put myself in a position that would allow me to dive out of the way if she came flying out at me, and I began to lift the lid. The hinges creaked loudly, and I jumped away causing the lid to slam down with a loud crack.
Dudley jumped about a foot.
Then he started to snicker.
“Maybe you should lift it up,” I said. “That way I can nail her with the tomahawk if she grabs a hold of you.”
“Good luck with that idea,” Dudley said.
I opened the coffin.
It was empty, just a little bit of dirt on the bottom.
“There must be another tunnel that we missed,” said Dudley.
“There wasn’t another tunnel,” I replied. “I followed the blood drops. She had to have gone this way.”
Dudley came away from the tunnel we had used to get into the room and stood next to me besides the coffin. I thought for a moment and once again began to search the floor for blood drops with the beam of my flashlight. Perhaps there was another tunnel leading out of this room we had missed in the darkness.
Dudley began to search as well. We looked near three of the four corners but came up empty handed until Dudley began to search the dirt floor near the final corner of the room.
“Jaxon,” Dudley said. “I think I found something. It might be a blood…”
He didn’t finish his thought. A pale hand came down from between two ceiling boards and grabbed him by the hair. We never looked up. The new tunnel was above us in the ceiling. It was plain as day, and we never even noticed it.
Dudley twisted and turned as the hand tried to pull him up through the boards and into the new tunnel. His frantic movements saved his life. The vampire couldn’t pull him into the hole. Given a few more seconds, she might have been able to do it, but I wasn’t about to give her those few seconds.
I swung the tomahawk into her outstretched arm and damn near severed it. Actually, I was somewhat shocked that the arm didn’t come flying off, but vampires are built pretty damn tough. Still, the wound deadened the arm. It went immediately limp, and I shoved Dudley out of the way and sprayed automatic fire into the hole.
I was rewarded by a crumbling noise above my head, and I had to step out of the way as the vampire fell from the hole onto the dirty floor.
She looked horrible. Her skin was as white as paper. Her tutu was smeared with black blood and slimy dirt. The skin on her face and arms was burned horribly, and worst of all, the tomahawk wound in her head had not yet closed, and I could see a sliver of her brain.
“Wait,” she gasped as I walked towards her with my tomahawk.
I paused for just a moment, shocked that she was actually asking me not to attack her. I couldn’t remember her doing anything other than threatening me or insulting me.
“You win,” the vampire said. “I’ll leave. Just go away, and I won’t bother you anymore.”
For the very first time, I could see the actual fear in her dead eyes.
“Where’s my friend?” I asked. “What did you do with him?”
The only answer I received was a quiet, dry laugh. So I pulled back my tomahawk and prepared to deliver what I was hoping would be the final blow of the fight.
“Leave me alone,” the vampire said as she suddenly slammed into me and ran from the room and into the tunnel leading back to the bedroom.
“Fuck me,” Dudley said. “How the hell can she still be moving?”
“Beats me,” I answered. “But did you notice how much she’s slowed down?”
Dudley didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he followed me back the way we had come. I could just see her feet disappear up the hole under the bed as we entered the first room. I limped in pursuit and had just started to climb the hole when I heard the sound of Merrick attacking and the vampire screaming.
I climbed to the top of the hole just in time to catch Merrick out of the air as the vampire threw her away. I quickly set Merrick back down on her feet and then straightened up to face the vampire.
She stood in the corner of the room. She was crouched and waiting for just the right moment to pounce on me.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like a little girl.
“Not a chance,” I answered.
She found her moment when Dudley poked his head out of the hole, and I briefly looked in his direction. What she didn’t realize is that I wasn’t really distracted. I just gave her a fake out because I wanted her away from the wall.
To her shock, I met her charge, and before her good arm could close around my body, I ducked down and picked her straight up into the air by her legs. I didn’t try to flip her over or slam her down onto the ground. Instead, I never stopped charging forward. I ran with all the speed my wounded leg could muster, right to the blackened bedroom window, and dove head first through the painted glass into the bright morning sunlight of the backyard.
I felt the wet drip of blood from a dozen small cuts on my face from the broken glass as I tumbled and rolled on the cold grass. I felt me knee pop, and threaten to explode. Yet I managed to find my footing, and locate the vampire.
She had tumbled from my grasp, but not very far. She looked me straight in the eyes for just a moment, and then she began to scream as the smoke rose from her body and her skin began to blister and crack. Dudley emerged from the broken window and started to pepper her chest with bullets whenever she tried to crawl away.
A burning vampire is a difficult thing to watch. They seem all too human as they twist and contort in agony. The smell is nauseating. The end is almost too far away. Her features had been burned away completely when I finally took pity on her.
I swung my tomahawk with all my might, and cleaved through her neck. The screaming stopped instantly, and I began to notice the bright and clear morning for the first time. It was almost beautiful if I looked away from the melting corpse at my feet. I’d never been much of a daylight person, but at that moment I was certainly grateful.
Dudley and I watched the corpse sizzle, and pop, until there was nothing left but ash. The flames never came forth. I think I was a little disappointed at that. I was hoping to see a much more impressive death. Instead, what we got was a slow and torturous end.
Then we heard the sounds of muffled gunfire, and the screams of many zombies. I’m positive the battle with the zombies had been raging on all along as we watched the vampire dissolve. It was only when we were satisfied she wasn’t coming back, and Dudley had kicked away the largest pile of ash with his boot, did the realization begin to hit us.
We were trapped.
I leaned on Dudley and we hobbled to the back door of the house. Merrick rushed forward from the bedroom, and jumped into my arms. Now that the vampire was dead, she wanted her fair share of attention. I gave her a quick scratch and joined Nick at one of the front windows.
The zombies were everywhere.
I radioed immediately to Hardin and told him to drop off a shit-ton of ammo. Then I looked towards the survivors. All of them were emaciated and weak looking. They wouldn’t be able to make a run for to the Jeeps.
“We’ll make a stand here,” I announced. “I need some time to come up with a plan.”
“Not a problem,” Dudley said. “The house doesn’t have a lot of windows. We can board things up and give you some time to repair your leg and head.”
“Dude, get off me,” Nick said. It was the last thing I heard as I slid ungracefully into him, and passed out.
“You passed out?”
Right on top of Nick. One second I was standing there, and then I wasn’t.
“Why did you pass out?”
I’d taken some serious damage since I got to the hotel. My messed up leg was the worst of it, but I’m pretty sure I had a concussion, and possibly some broken ribs. I was also exhausted.
“You had all that going on?”
Yeah, vampires hit hard.
“Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
Who am I going to tell? It’s not like anyone could have done anything. Besides, I can put most problems to the side and get on with my job. The leg was the only thing giving me trouble.
“I’ve heard from more than a few people that you are relentless in a fight. They sort of think it’s a little spooky. Would you agree?”
I would agree. I have no problems with that one. When it’s time to fight, I’m going to go balls to the wall until I can no longer do so. I guess it seems a little spooky, but I am the Guardian, after all. I can absorb more damage than the average person, and continue to function.
“How long was it before you woke up after passing out on Nick?”
I think I was out for about ten hours or so. I could have shaved maybe five or six hours off of that if someone had woken me up, but the boys thought I needed the rest.
I woke up to the sounds of screaming.
One second I was nestled firmly under a layer of sleep, and then I began to hear the screams. They were distant at first, but they soon became louder, and louder. The muffled thumps of silenced weapons came next.
I opened my eyes.
I was in a bathtub full of warm water. My clothes were cleaned, and folded, on top of the sink. My weapons, boots, and backpack, were stacked in a pile next to the clothes. The only thing I had on was my underwear and my wristwatch.
I looked at the time, and realized it was only a few hours until dark. The screaming began again. It sounded like Georgie. I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up because he was irritating the hell out of my headache. Then I realized I no longer had a headache. My leg was all healed up, as well. In fact, I felt pretty damn good.
I stood up in the tub and grabbed a large towel to dry off with. When I was dry, I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was looking pretty healthy and energetic, as far as I could tell. Nothing to complain about until Georgie barged through the door.
“Jaxon,” Georgie shrieked. “We’re in trouble. They’re breaking through our barriers.”
Fortunately, at that point, I had my pants on.
“Did you forget how to knock?” I asked. “Or are you trying to sneak a peek at my awesomeness?”
“What?” Georgie asked before it dawned on him that I was just joking around. “Seriously, we’re in trouble.”
I could see the panic in his eyes, but to be honest, I wasn’t really impressed. Georgie tends to panic on a somewhat regular basis.
“They’re inside the house,” shrieked out another voice, and this one actually caused me some alarm. It was a female voice, and I didn’t recognize it at all.
I threw on the rest of my gear, shoved my Ti-Lite folding knife into my pocket, checked that my Recon 1 folding knife was on my belt, threw my blood stained Harley Davidson hat on top of my head, and ran out of the room.
Things were bad.
Even the backyard was full of zombies. When the backyard is full of zombies, you can be sure the entire house has been surrounded. I immediately ran up to the first woman I saw. She was one of the survivors from the pit.
“Where are they?” I asked.
She pointed a shaky finger towards the kitchen, and I went running. I didn’t like what I saw when I got there. Merrick had a zombie by the back of the neck, and was shaking him around the linoleum floor. There were two others headed right towards me, and even more attempting to climb through the broken window.
I took out one of the zombies with my tomahawk. It was easy enough. The first hit is always pretty easy. The zombies never see it coming. It was an angled cut to the forehead. The blow just barely sliced the brain, but since no momentum was lost upon impact, I was able to swing the tomahawk all the way around in a wide arc and miss my second target.
The bastard had ducked and grabbed me around the waist. It was a wasted effort. I was too healthy and full of energy. I shattered his nose on my knee, and then elbowed his temple to smack him loose. While I was doing that, I ordered Georgie to fire on the broken window so no more of them got inside the house.
I finished off my second zombie as he was climbing back up to his feet. It was a simple chop to the back of his head. After that, I told Merrick to release her new toy, and I chopped that zombie as well.
Georgie was in full panic mode as he fired aimlessly towards the window. He wasn’t being very effective, so I told him to go find some nails and something we could use to board it up, and I took his place.
Shooting a hole through every head that popped up into my sights was pretty much the easiest job I’d had since I returned to El Paso. Merrick was even wagging her tail happily as I fired away merrily.
Eventually, I realized that I could, in fact, do two things at once. I tapped my earpiece and asked for Dudley.
“What’s up?” Dudley asked.
“Oh, I’m just curious about how long we’ve been under attack?” I asked nonchalantly.
“We had some problems in the morning,” Dudley answered, “but it only started getting really bad about forty minutes or so ago.”
“What happened forty minutes ago?”
“Damned if I know,” Dudley answered. “They just started coming out of the woodwork. We’ve been keeping them out, but more and more are showing up. Maybe we should call for an extraction?”
“We would never make it to the chopper with the house being surrounded,” I answered. “Besides, only pussies call for extractions. How are Nick, and Javie, holding up?”
“Everyone is holding up pretty well except for Georgie,” Dudley answered. “I could hear him screaming for help all the way on the other side of the house. I was about to go help him when one of the survivors told me you were up and about. How are you feeling by the way?”
“I’m peachy,” I answered. “How much ammo do we have?”
“More than enough,” Dudley answered. “And the survivors are making sure we have fresh magazines when we need them. Maybe you should try and help us figure a way outta this mess?”
“Yeah, let me think on it for a bit.”
At that moment, Georgie came back into the room with his arms full of what seemed to be a broken table. He hesitated just a second before he went to work on securing the window. It was fun to watch the biggest piece of wood—which he had placed over the hole—buck and tremble as he tried to nail it to the wall. I was tempted to help him more than a few times, but the scene was just too funny.
“Georgie,” I finally said when he had the situation somewhat under control. “Maybe you should find a different line of work. You seem to be a little bit too much of a pansy for this job.”
“I’m no quitter,” Georgie said.
“Yes, you are.”
“Well I’m not quitting this. It’s something I should be doing. I just know it. So fuck off.”
I laughed. Georgie always makes me laugh. I used to call him my best shittiest friend, but I still hung out with him because he always made me laugh.
“What does that mean, ‘best shittiest’ friend?”
It means he’s a shitty friend, but out of all my shitty friends he was my favorite. I guess that still doesn’t make much sense, so let’s just say he wasn’t a great friend, but since he made me laugh I still hung out with him. There are actually some very positive factors with having a best shittiest friend by the way.
“Do tell.”
I can laugh at their expense, and never feel bad about it.
It was when Merrick and I started to leave the room that Georgie did the oddest thing.
“Jax,” Georgie said. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
It was odd. So odd that I didn’t bother to respond because I didn’t know what to say, I just gave a nod and went to see for myself how everyone else was doing. Some of the survivors tried to talk to me, but I sort of ignored them.
“You ignored them?”
I did. I had other things on my mind that were probably more important. I wanted an escape plan. I was starting to get a bit claustrophobic and the only thing bouncing around my head was to take everyone underground into the vampire’s tunnels and wait until the zombies got bored and left.
It was by no means the best plan I had ever come up with, but I couldn’t find an easy way out. If we made a run for it, and pushed through the horde, I’d lose people. That wasn’t going to work for me. I wasn’t about to commit to a plan in which I knew I was going to lose people.
I also didn’t think I would be able to make a run for it by myself, in an effort to lead the horde away, as I had done in the past. There were too many of them surrounding the house. They would swarm the door as soon as it opened. Even if I fought my way out, I don’t think the team would have been able to get the door or window sealed up again.
It was a bad situation all around.
Nick was guarding the front of the house. If an arm came through a boarded up window, he was quick about hacking into it with his fireman’s axe. The look of focus on his face was actually pretty impressive. I couldn’t remember having seen him so focused before.
Javie took the rear of the house. He was mainly using his pistol to keep the dead from gaining entry. He was shooting every face that came into view between the boards at point blank range. He was making quite a mess. It was odd seeing him dishing out so much violence, but he seemed to have everything under control.
Dudley was at the farthest end of the house, opposite Georgie. Things were pretty busy for him. He hadn’t managed to board up all the windows by the time the zombies started to attack. Some of them must have gotten in. The bodies on the floor gave evidence to that.
The screams of the dead were loud on his side of the house. The moaning, growls, and snarls, joined the screams in a cacophony straight from hell. The fists pounding on the outside walls made it difficult for me to think. I didn’t want to begin to imagine how many were out there. Certainly it wasn’t the biggest horde I’ve ever encountered, but it was probably the largest horde that ever had me trapped.
I pulled my tomahawk and began to hack at the zombies as Dudley completed the job of boarding up the windows. He managed a smile for me as he once again picked up his machete and hacked away at any limbs daring enough to come through his barrier.
We weren’t going to be able to keep up this pace forever.
Not nearly as important was what happened forty minutes before that caused the entire ruckus. Yet, it was still in the back of my mind. I knew we had company before I passed out, but according to Dudley, the house had been really swarmed only forty minutes ago.
“Duds, how bad were things before the house got swarmed?”
“Not bad at all,” Dudley answered. “I’m not even sure there were any out there. Then suddenly, the house was rushed.”
“What about before that?”
“It was pretty bad right about the time that you passed out, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle. That’s why we decided to stick it out and give you some time to heal. We finished off most of them by the afternoon while we boarded up the windows and reinforced the doors. After that, there would be just a few of them on the street every now and then.”
“There has to be something going on outside the house that we aren’t aware of,” I said. “Something must have led the horde here if things had been quiet before the attack.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Dudley said. “But it’s not like I can stick my head out the window and take a look up the street.”
“All right,” I said. “Keep up what you’re doing and let me know if you need some backup.”
Merrick and I went back to Georgie, and watched him panic as he attempted to keep the zombies out of the kitchen. I even helped out when the water got too deep for him. Merrick helped, as well. She almost seemed to be making a game out of catching the hands and arms that reached through the boards.
The battle raged well into the night.
We were under siege, and I couldn’t find an acceptable way out that would benefit everyone. I helped out wherever I was needed, but I could see the fatigue beginning to set in on everyone’s faces.
It was time to make some tough decisions. I tapped my earpiece. I wanted everyone to have a say.
“All right folks,” I said. “It looks like this crowd isn’t thinning out anytime soon. The only idea floating around in my head involves all of us hiding out in the vampire tunnels until the zombies get bored and go away. What do you guys think?”
“Dudley told us about the tunnels,” Javie said. “If they find us down there and come in after us we’ll all be trapped.”
“We’ll be trapped with a lot of ammo, and a more defensible position,” Georgie added. “I don’t think we have many other options.”
“What if we have the choppers open fire on the zombies out there?” Nick asked.
“Those zombies are pressed up against the house,” I answered. Think about what a .50 cal will do to the walls. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What if we go down to the tunnels and then have the choppers come in and thin out the horde?”
“I’m down with that,” Dudley said.
“I’m still concerned about getting trapped,” Javie said.
“I like the idea,” Georgie said.
“We can hold them off until the choppers are in range and then drop into the tunnels,” Nick said. “That way we won’t have to worry about them getting inside the house before the helicopters show up.”
“All right then,” I said. “We have a plan. Everyone keep doing what you’re doing while I get the survivors into the tunnels.”
“I’m following everything,” Hardin said into my earpiece. “I will have two choppers en route inside of five minutes. You radio in and let me know when you have everyone out of harm’s way.”
“Excellent,” I replied. I still wasn’t used to having Hardin paying attention to our conversations. I guess it did save us some time every now and then, and he rarely intruded until we asked him for something.
It didn’t take me very long to lead the survivors to the hole in the floor of the basement. I can’t say they were actually happy to be going down inside of the vampires sleeping quarters. Once I explained what was going to happen within the next ten minutes or so, they rapidly got over whatever problems they were having.
I did my best to lower them down. I didn’t want any of them to twist an ankle or break a leg when they landed. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on each of their faces as I took a hold of their arms. They were afraid. They had every right to be, but they were also trusting. I could see it as plain as day in their expressions. They had complete trust in me.
I wasn’t going to fail them.
The dead were still beating on the walls, and reaching through the boarded up windows. I hated the sound. I hated feeling trapped. I went to Georgie and helped him reinforce his barrier. I wanted him and everyone else to have a head start when they ditched their area and ran for the hole in the bedroom.
If the zombies were right behind us when we went down the hole, we’d then have a firefight underground and though the odds were in our favor, I’d just assume not have any zombies follow us down there.
After Georgie, I moved on to help Javie. When he was relatively secure, I moved on to help Nick. When Nick was good and ready, I moved over to the far side of the house to help out Dudley. Merrick was right beside me through all of this. She seemed to sense that something big was about to happen and was wagging her tail excitedly.
The shamblers were still pretty heavy on Dudley’s side of the house, and it took some time to secure things enough to give him a head start when it was time to go. Merrick seemed to enjoy another chance to play her game of savaging all the hands and arms trying to reach through the boards.
“You ready to roll out?” I asked.
“Ready when you are,” Dudley answered. “But maybe we should let Georgie go first. I don’t want him to piss his pants being the last man to leave his post.”
“Georgie,” I said after I tapped my earpiece. “Are you secure over there?”
“I’m doing pretty good,” Georgie said.
“All right,” I said. “Get your ass down that hole.”
After Georgie radioed back that he was safely underground, I radioed Javie.
“Javie, how are things going?”
“My barrier will hold for about five minutes, I’m guessing.”
“Good, now move your ass down that…”
“Jaxon,” Nick interrupted, “I’ve got movement over here.”
“Of course you have movement over there,” I answered testily. “The house is surrounded by zombies.”
“No, asshole,” Nick said. “Something just barreled into them and took a bunch down.”
“Everyone hold your positions,” I announced through my earpiece. “Georgie, get back into position and cover the kitchen again.”
I sprinted through the house with Merrick at my heels. I found Nick kneeling by one of his windows, gazing out at the darkened street. He wasn’t fighting off any zombies.
“There it is again,” Nick said. “Check it out.”
I dropped to the ground beside him, and took a look out one of the many cracks between the boards. The zombies were no longer searching for an entry point on his side of the house. Something had distracted them, and they were all wandering around the front yard in search of it.
There were also a lot fewer zombies.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Give it a minute,” Nick said.
“I’ve got something going on in the backyard,” Javie announced through his earpiece.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed to no one in particular.
I ran as quickly as I could to the back of the house where Javie was trying to look through the boards and avoid the grasping undead hands.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Something dropped down on them and started ripping them apart,” Javie said. “Then it vanished, but almost half of them are gone.”
“Double what the hell?” I exclaimed.
“I’m getting help over here as well,” Dudley said through his earpiece. “Not sure what it is, but it moves pretty fast.”
“Jax,” Nick said through my earpiece. “It’s a dude. It’s a dude in a gray suit and he’s fucking up the zombies.”
I ran over to Nick and just as I expected, whatever he had seen was no longer there when I looked between the boards. I would have thought they were all going crazy, but then I noticed that there wasn’t any pounding on the sides of the house. When I looked out the window, I only saw about eight zombies when there had been maybe a hundred or so on Nick’s side alone.
“I’ve got a woman over here!” Dudley shouted since he was too excited to use his earpiece. “She just took out about ten or fifteen shamblers.”
“What about you Javie?” I asked through my earpiece.
“I think there’s a few of them,” Javie answered. “It’s hard to tell, but the horde is definitely thinning out.”
“Jax,” Nick said. “Take a look.”
I took his advice and finally saw one of our secretive helpers. It was a man dressed in beige pants. He moved so fast I couldn’t really tell where he had come from. He darted in among the zombies smacking them hard on their heads, and scooping up their unmoving bodies before they hit the ground. He had gathered up three of them before he moved off quickly and disappeared from view.
“Hardin,” I said after tapping my earpiece. “Keep the helicopters at a distance.”
“Understood,” Hardin answered.
I was just about to turn away from the window when I saw the man in the gray suit Nick had mentioned earlier. He dropped down from a nearby rooftop and proceeded to pick up where the other man had left off. I realized quickly that the slaps on the head were hard enough to kill the zombies.
“Fuckers are strong,” I pointed out to Nick.
“Got that right,” Nick answered.
I left him at the boarded up windows and went to check on Georgie. I found him at his post, looking through the boards. I was just a little surprised he actually went back to his post. Then again, there were no longer any zombies attacking his area.
“You see anything?” I asked.
“Not a thing,” Georgie answered. “I heard a lot of thumping and crunching sounds before I made it to the windows, but I never saw a thing. You think we should go out there and help these guys?”
“Do they look like they need our help?”
“No, but it’s the polite thing to do.”
“I guess that depends on why they’re helping us,” I said before walking back to the front of the house.
It took about another fifteen or twenty minutes before the area was completely secure. Our saviors had not once tried to make contact with us. An eerie silence breathed over us when they were finished. Nobody said a word. It was almost as if everybody was waiting for the other shoe to drop; it lasted half an hour. Everyone stayed put and rested during the all-too-brief intermission.
Then a body dropped ungracefully from somewhere above, and landed in the front yard.
Nick and I could hear the wet slapping sound it made as it slammed into the dead grass. Icy fingers began to climb up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand straight up. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
“Why the hell can’t they just be on our side?” Nick asked. “Why do they need to go and fuck things up?”
“Why throw a body at us?” I asked. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“I knew they were too good to be true. I just knew it.”
I wasn’t really paying attention to Nick at the moment. I was studying the body. My brain wasn’t giving me much of a clue, but something about the body seemed awfully familiar. I felt my eyes widen in my skull when I finally figured it out.
“Nick,” I whispered. “He’s wearing a bite suit. I think its Kingsley.”
“No way,” Nick replied.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going out there.”
“Listen up everyone,” I said after tapping my earpiece. “I want you all up to the front of the house immediately. I’m going out there, and I want backup.”
“So they just threw Kinsley’s body onto the front lawn?”
That’s exactly what they did.
“Why would they do that?”
I’m not sure. Maybe they wanted to get our attention. Or, maybe they just wanted to freak us out a bit.
“Was Kingsley alive?”
That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? At the time, we didn’t have any idea. All we could see was a lump in the grass wearing our protective gear, complete with the tactical vest and the high bite collar. The lump wasn’t moving.
“I don’t think you should go out there,” Dudley said after everyone had gotten a look out the window. “This seems like some sort of a setup.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “But that’s our buddy out there, and he doesn’t look so good. I want everyone to file out behind me but stay next to the door in case we need to make a hasty retreat back into the house.”
I walked out into the yard slowly. I could hear Merrick whining behind me as Dudley held her by the collar. I stayed on the concrete path all the way to the sidewalk. I was scanning the area all around me. I looked above the houses, in the trees, everywhere.
As far as I could see, the area was clear.
Kingsley was in a heap to the left of the concrete path, just before the sidewalk. He still wasn’t moving. When I reached him, I feared the worst. His skin was cold and clammy. His eyes were closed. I unzipped his bite collar and reached in his vest. I wanted to see if I could feel his pulse.
“Jax,” Kingsley whispered. “Is that you?”
“Yeah buddy,” I whispered back through an ear-to-ear smile. “It’s me. Now let’s get you out of here.”
I let my MP7 dangle by its strap and shoved my hands through the armholes of his vest in order to haul him to his feet. He felt lighter than usual. I was wondering when he’d eaten last. His arms went around me in a hug when he had both his legs underneath him.
“Jaxon,” Kingsley whispered, in a voice too low.
“Yeah Kingsley,” I answered. “I’m here. Let’s get you moving.”
“Jaxon,” Kingsley whispered once again. His rank breath was on my ear. “Stop bossing me around.”
I was about to ask him what he meant, but he didn’t give me a chance. His arms tightened around me as if they were made out of steel, and he spun me around so that my back was towards the rest of the team.
I was in shock. I was speechless. I didn’t understand what was happening. The punch came, and I didn’t even see it. He hit me right under the jaw, and I went flying back towards the team. Suddenly, I understood: the violence, and the power.
But I didn’t like it.
I was crushed. All I could think was that I should have tried harder to find him. I shouldn’t have killed the vampire. I should have caught her sooner, and made her talk. I should have made her tell me where he was. I failed him.
I failed him, and she turned him.
Kingsley was a vampire.
Thoughts of protecting him raced through my mind. I wouldn’t let anyone harm him. I wouldn’t let Hardin or anyone else stake him, or burn him...or...or...try anything to finish him off. He was my friend. I let him down.
I failed him.
I failed him.
“Kingsley,” I said, through a mouth filled with blood. “Try and control it. I’m here for you. All of us are here for you. We can beat this thing. We can maybe even find a cure.”
None of the team had moved, except for Nick. He had his MP7 up and ready to fire. If Kingsley made the wrong move, Nick wouldn’t hesitate. I wanted to diffuse the situation before Kingsley got hurt.
“Nick,” I said. “Lower your weapon. “Kingsley’s our friend. He just needs a moment to get himself together.”
“Is that what I need Jaxon?” Kingsley asked. “You’re telling me what I need now?”
I couldn’t understand what was happening.
“I’m just trying to help,” I answered. “It’s not your fault that they did this to you. I want to help you.”
“I don’t want your help, Jaxon,” Kingsley said in that low voice. “Nobody did anything to me I didn’t ask for.”
“What?” I asked. It was all I could say: one little word. I couldn’t understand what I was hearing.
“I asked for this,” Kingsley said. “I wanted it. I was tired of being weak and afraid. I was tired of being forced to endanger my life time, and time again, while you played the hero.”
“Who forced you to endanger yourself?” Dudley asked with an angry tone.
“HE DID!” Kingsley shouted while he pointed down at me with a clawed finger. “HE FORCED ME! HE FORCED ALL OF US! ARE YOU TOO BLIND TO SEE WHAT HE DOES TO PEOPLE?”
“He didn’t force you to do anything,” Dudley said calmly. “We do what we do of our own free will.”
“Really?” Kingsley asked. “What do you think he would do if one of us tried to quit? What do you think people would say if I had quit? I think they’d be calling me a coward right now. I think people would be ridiculing me. I had no way out.”
“Nobody would have thought anything like that,” Dudley said. “Why would you...?”
“You’re a liar,” Kingsley interrupted. “Either that, or you don’t know him like I do. He’s controlling. He forced me to follow him back into this fucking city. Eventually, he would have gotten me killed. I was terrified, and I was sick of being afraid. Now, I don’t have to be afraid. Now I’m the king of the mountain.”
“No,” Georgie said. “You’re a monster that needs put down.”
“Come and try it Georgie,” Kingsley said. “Try and put me down. All of you are now expendable. The Master doesn’t care about anyone but Jaxon. He wants Jaxon all for himself.”
“What are you talking about Kingsley?” Dudley asked. “Your little Master is dead. Jaxon killed her this morning.”
Kingsley began to laugh. It wasn’t a pretty sound. It was more like nails on a chalkboard. I wanted to do something. The situation was rapidly heading towards the point of no return, but for the life of me I didn’t know what to do.
So I sat there. Right on the sidewalk, still on my ass, with blood dripping down my chin from the tongue I damn near bit off when he nailed me with that uppercut.
“She wasn’t the Master,” Kingsley said with a triumphant smile. “She wasn’t even close, not by a long shot, but the Master is coming. He’s coming for Jaxon. He wants Jaxon to pay for what he did. Do you remember what I told you Jaxon?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I was still numb and in shock.
“I told you that you were in over your head,” Kingsley continued. “You were just too stupid to listen. You have no idea how long I’ve resented you. You have no idea how much Hell is coming for you. You have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this. I can’t wait to see your little self-important world come crumbling down upon you. When this is all over, you won’t be anything more than a footnote in history. Nobody will even remember your name.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me that Kingsley was rather talkative in that moment. He was normally a quiet guy. It probably wasn’t the best thing to notice at the time, but it struck me as odd.
“I think you’re going to be pretty disappointed, you fucking traitor,” Dudley snarled.
“Right,” Kingsley said. “I’m a traitor. I’m a traitor because I don’t want to follow an egotistical man who will eventually get me killed. I can’t be the only one here who feels that way. I know I’m not. What about you Javie?”
“What about me?” Javie asked in a quiet voice.
“We’ve always been tight,” Kingsley said. “Join me, and we’ll get away from here. We’ll spend the rest of our lives traveling the world and living it up. Just me and you, what do you say?”
“Were Javie and Kingsley as close as he was implying?”
Yeah, they were pretty tight. I felt bad for Javie at that moment. He had been really worried about his buddy, and just when he thought things were going to turn out all right, he finds out that his friend jumped sides. Even worse than that, Kingsley was asking Javie to bail on the team, and join up with him.
“You can’t live any kind of life,” Javie said. “You’re dead and you’re a monster just like Georgie said. I won’t go anywhere with you, but I will do my very best to put you down.”
The shock on Kingsley’s face was almost humorous. He really truly expected Javie to join him, but the shock didn’t last long. His face quickly turned to pure fury, and the black drool began to drip from his lips.
He went after Javie.
He was fast, but Nick had been waiting for him to make a move. The spray of wooden bullets stitched across Kingsley’s chest, and he screamed out an inhuman wail. Then one by one, everyone began to drill him. He spun, twitched, and wailed, across the yard before he found his feet, and ran off down the street.
“I always knew that guy was an asshole,” Nick said.
“Everyone back inside the house,” Dudley said.
The team started moving. Well, everybody started moving but me. I was still sitting on the sidewalk, not even bothering to wipe the blood off my chin. Dudley noticed I wasn’t moving and hauled me to my feet by my vest.
“Are you hurt?”
I didn’t even acknowledge that he was talking to me. I was just—I don’t know—empty. I was having a very difficult time accepting what had happened. I couldn’t believe Kingsley had turned on me.
“Jax,” Dudley said as he gave me a little shake. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head that I wasn’t injured.
“Let’s go,” Dudley said as he dragged me back into the house.
“This isn’t the first time a friend turned on you. Tito betrayed you as well. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you personally, but did you feel the same way about Tito?”
I don’t really think Tito betrayed me. I think he more or less betrayed himself and the people that were following him. It’s not really the same thing. I don’t think Tito would ever have wished me harm.
I thought about what he said for a brief moment before I realized he was right. When I spoke with Tito, he was filled with regret. He admitted that he did what he did because he was jealous. He never wished harm on anyone.
“What happened next?”
We were inside the house. Dudley had removed my canteen and was forcing me to drink. The water would heal up my tongue, and he was pretty worried about the amount of blood. Everybody was staring at me.
“Why are you all shocked?” Nick asked. “It was pretty obvious that guy had some sort of problem with you. Hell, I noticed he was kinda mental the minute Jax showed up at Georgie’s house.”
I was pretty sure he was looking at me, but I ignored him, and sat down against the wall. To say the least I was defeated. Having a friend betray me was beyond my comprehension. It’s happened before, of course, never to that degree, but it’s happened. I’m sure it’s something that happens to everyone at some point in time.
The thing is…I could never, in a million years, even conceive of betraying one of my friends. It’s just something I could never do. To me, my friends are my family. That means something to me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean something to other people.
“What do you mean?” Dudley asked.
“I mean that Kingsley is a resentful bastard,” Nick answered. “I could practically see the resentment drip from his mouth every time he said something.”
“He did seem sort of nervous when we came back into the city,” Georgie added. “I just can’t believe he did what he did.”
“I think he’s fundamentally weak as a man,” Javie said. “He wasn’t man enough to let anyone know he was too chicken shit to come back. It was easier for him to just blame Jaxon for all his problems.”
“The only problem with that bullshit,” Dudley said. “Is that Jax did a lot of shit for that traitor. Seriously, where the hell would Kingsley be if it hadn’t been for Jax? He’d be dead, that’s where he’d be. Think about it. Kingsley doesn’t possess the drive, or will, to have survived the outbreak.”
“You got that right,” Georgie added. “He was even starting to come a bit unglued before we led everyone out of the city. I remember the way he started drinking, and the angry comments he would make. We should have seen this coming. Kingsley was too weak to be a member of this team.”
“It’s just unfortunate that Nick is his replacement,” Dudley said.
Everyone began to laugh. Well, everyone but Nick.
“Seriously,” Dudley said as he offered me his hand to help me up. “You were good to him, Jax. You were a great friend. You saved his life. The villain in this story is Kingsley. The Hell with him, all right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “The Hell with him.”
I think it was the support that snapped me out of it. I was still hurt. I still felt betrayed, but I realized I had done nothing wrong. I mean; it’s not like I’m a mind reader. To start resenting me because he was too afraid to speak up for himself, well, that kinda seems to be more of his problem than mine.
“Hardin,” I said after tapping my earpiece. “Send in one of the helicopters for an extraction.”
“Good idea,” Hardin answered.
Everyone was looking at me once again.
“We need to get those survivors out of here, boys,” I said. “We have some vampires to hunt.”
Everyone began to cheer. Even Georgie, which was a bit of a surprise. I would have been less shocked if he would have sucked his thumb and pissed his pants.
It wasn’t long before we heard the sound of a chopper above our heads. Georgie had led all of the survivors into the living room to await their extraction. The plan was to lead them to the helicopter and then hop into the Jeeps once it was back in the air.
As soon as the house began to vibrate, which meant that the chopper was descending, we led the survivors out to the front yard. We wanted to make the extraction as fast as possible. There may not have been any zombies in sight, but we weren’t about to take chances.
Everyone was looking up as the helicopter lowered itself from the sky. The pilot was going to bring her down right in the middle of the street so all of us hung back in the front yard in order to give it plenty of space.
Something black streaked through the sky.
“Did you see that?” Javie asked.
I’m pretty sure everyone saw what he was referring to. It’s just that nobody was exactly sure of what it was. To me, it looked as if a black shape zipped through the sky, and landed inside the helicopter.
It was only a few moments after that when I had figured things out. The helicopter began to spin around wildly. The nose of the craft was lifting up and down in an erratic pattern. Then things got even worse: the chopper did a nosedive straight into the asphalt.
Right before it crashed into the street, I saw the black shape shoot from the helicopter, and streak across the sky to the rooftops of the houses further up the road.
I was amazed there was no explosion, but the crash was deafening, regardless. The sounds of tearing metal when the body of the aircraft crumpled against the ground were grotesque. The blades of the helicopter sliced into the street, sending chunks of metal and asphalt straight towards us.
I took down at least four of the survivors and covered them with my body. Dudley was on the ball as well, and he shielded the ones I couldn’t grab. I could hear him grunt as he was pelted by debris.
When things finally settled down, I ran to the chopper. I knew it would be a wasted effort on my part, but if there was even the slightest chance the pilot or crew were still alive I was going to help.
Nick was right behind me. He was telling me to be careful. He was worried that the broken remains would explode. I climbed over the wreckage and investigated the bodies. The pilot was dead. I knew it before I even checked his pulse. Two of the soldiers were also gone, but the third soldier, he died in my arms.
I was pissed.
“It was a vampire that attacked the helicopter, wasn’t it?”
It was, and that was the scary thing. The vampire children we put down in the hotel were pretty tough, but we managed. The female vampire that had been stalking me was about a hundred times more difficult to put down, and we barely managed. Whatever took out that helicopter was nothing I wanted to mess with.
Nick tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up the street. I took a look and saw that two female vampires were standing in the middle of the road about a block away. Reluctantly, I looked down the road in the opposite direction. I saw two male vampires, also about a block away, and they were slowly walking towards us. I cast my gaze towards the park on our side. There were another four male vampires walking through the overgrown grass in our direction.
“Dudley,” I said after tapping my earpiece. “Get everyone back into the house immediately.”
“Gotcha,” Dudley said.
“I don’t see Kingsley with any of them,” Nick said.
“I doubt you will, either,” I answered. “He’s apparently not exactly big on fighting.”
Nick laughed at my comment and the two of us slowly backed away from the wreckage of the helicopter to the front door of the house. We took our time. I didn’t want to run and give them a reason to chase after us. That wouldn’t have been good at all because they probably would have caught us.
I was the last one inside. My eyes were trained on the vampires the entire time. They all came together on the street in front of the house just as I closed the door. We were effectively trapped once again.
I had some bad news to deliver, but while I made myself ready to let everyone know how bad our situation was, I realized nobody was even looking at me. Instead, they were staring down the main hallway that branched off into the living room: a room that none of them seemed very keen upon entering.
I smelled fire. Someone had lit a fire in the living rooms fireplace. We had company, and judging from everyone’s expression, it wasn’t the good kind of company.
I walked past the huddled group and poked my head into the living room.
There was a man in a black suit stoking the fire. His suit was immaculately pressed, and so was the white shirt underneath. I found that rather odd because the suit was old and worn. It had small tears in the pants and jacket. The edges of the sleeves were frayed. Yet, there it was, nice and pressed.
The man wearing the suit had pale, grayish skin. He had the face of a man in his mid-forties, but his dark grey hair made him seem just a little bit older. His lips were black and his chin had smear marks from what seemed to be a constant wiping of his mouth. Even the ends of his white sleeves that peeked out of his jacket were stained by the black drool.
The worst thing about him was his eyes. They were white and filmy. If I had seen a human with those eyes, I would have assumed he was blind and in need of medical attention. No such luck with this vampire though. I knew he could see. It was the way in which his eyes darted around the room.
“Come in, Guardian,” the vampire said with a motion of his clawed hand.
I moved my body into the room. Everyone else stayed more or less behind the wall. Yet the team was ready for action. I could hear them adjusting their weapons as I moved closer to the vampire.
He finally looked at me.
For what seemed like an eternity we simply sized one another up. Then with a smile and a sigh he began to speak.
“I felt her passing just as I began my slumber. It was as if my heart were breaking into a thousand pieces. I didn’t want her to go. I was against the idea from the very beginning, but my daughter was a hunter: probably one of the very best hunters to ever walk among us. She knew things, even modern things, like explosives and weapons. She loved the hunt. She loved to toy with her food. She used her knowledge of all things modern when she hunted, but I would imagine that you already know that don’t you?”
I just stared at him.
“She had always wanted to hunt a Guardian. It was her dream, but I always refused her. The last Guardian was much too experienced for her. It would be too dangerous. That was the excuse I used, but then you came along: a brand new, and inexperienced, Guardian. She begged me to let her hunt you. She came to me with tears in her eyes, and begged me for the ultimate hunt. I could refuse her no longer. It was my mistake.”
I just stared at him.
“Once upon a time, I would have had no problem letting her go. We vampires always killed Guardians. Your kind is nothing more than a pest. Even a young vampire is stronger than a Guardian, but times have changed. Weapons have improved. A Guardian can pose a threat in this day and age. She was so young, my beautiful daughter—so very young—and all her hunter’s skill proved inadequate. Tell me, did she die well?”
I just stared at him.
“ANSWER ME HUMAN!” he screamed in a voice so loud that I heard someone back in the hallway whimper.
“She died screaming,” I answered finally.
The vampires face contorted in fury. His clawed fingers dug into his palms causing the black blood to ooze. The black drool began to leak from his mouth, and then, he was under control again. His face was calm, almost serene. He smiled at me politely, and nodded his head in respect.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I rarely lose control. I am almost ashamed of myself.”
I just stared at him.
“I’m going to kill you,” the vampire said. “I want you to know that. I don’t want the fact that you are going to die to come as a surprise. I want you to be fully prepared, knowing that I am going to kill you.”
I just stared at him.
“I could have my followers end your life, but that would cause me to lose respect. Vampires are, by nature, a rather violent species. The ones outside this home are under my control. They obey me, and I, in turn, allow them to exist in my territory. This beautiful land has been my territory for a very, very, long time. I claimed this land for myself after I destroyed the previous Master in battle, and I’ve held it ever since. Such is our way.”
I just stared at him.
“So you see,” the vampire said. “If I fail to avenge my daughter’s death, the others will see me as weak, and will eventually attack me. I have no doubt I can destroy each and every one of them. That isn’t the problem we’re facing at all. It’s much simpler than that. You see: I very much want to kill you. I want to end your life. I want your death to be slow, and I want you to suffer. Most importantly, I want all of the humans around you to see you suffer. I want your death to have an audience. I want the humans to know what happens when they cut down an immortal.”
I just stared at him.
He gazed back at me, and the black ooze began to drip from his lips again. He slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but he never took his eyes off of me.
“Excuse me,” the vampire said. “The fluid aids in our digestion, and it tends to flow heavier when our hunger is at its worst, or our emotions are at their strongest. It probably seems rather revolting to you.”
I just stared at him.
“You are a warrior,” the vampire said. “That much I can tell; you aren’t afraid of me. You know you can’t possibly win, but still, you want to attack.”
My eyes narrowed.
“What are you waiting for little Guardian?”
With the speed of a demon, I freed my tomahawk and let it fly at his face. It was a perfect motion. There were no slips or stutters. The action was so fast that no living, breathing person, on the face of this earth could have survived.
The vampire caught the weapon in mid-air. It reminded me of what I did to his daughter.
Then he moved. He was fast, unbelievably fast. He crossed the room in the blink of an eye and grabbed a hold of me. The team poured into the living room and took up positions. I could hear Merrick growling. He threw me into the lot of them.
I crashed, tumbled, and hit my head against the wall. The vampire was still moving. By the time I had gotten to my feet, with my MP7 pointed in his direction, I realized he had incapacitated the entire team. Even worse, he held Georgie by the throat in front of him.
I didn’t have a shot.
Everyone was pretty banged up, but they were slowly coming back to their senses.
“That was almost impressive little Guardian,” the vampire said. “Ultimately, it was a futile gesture, but it was audacious, nonetheless.”
“Squeeze any tighter on my buddy’s throat, and I’ll blow your mind,” I snarled.
“Have no fears about that, Guardian,” the vampire said. “Our time is not yet ripe. As I said before, I want your death to have an audience. Tonight, I simply wanted you to have a sample of the power you will soon be facing. Enjoy your stay of execution. Use the time to prepare for your final battle, but I warn you, make no attempt to leave this house, for if you do, my revenge will be terrible.”
Then he hurled Georgie through the air as if he were nothing more than a ragdoll. I did my best to catch him. I partially succeeded, but we both sort of collided into Nick, and Dudley. When I turned back to have another go at the vampire, he was gone.
Merrick gave a soft whine and rushed over to cuddle up next to me. I reached over and began to scratch her behind the ear. Nobody said a word. I guess we were sort of shell-shocked.
“Well that fucking sucks,” Nick said, breaking the silence.
I had to chuckle at his ability to sum an entire situation up with just four words. It wasn’t long before Dudley joined in on the laugh and before I knew it, everybody was laughing heartily.
“I agree with Nick,” Dudley said.
“Well I agree with you agreeing with Nick,” I announced.
And we all laughed some more. I’m not sure why we were laughing. I think it was because none of us knew what else to do.
“Why did you have to go and kill his daughter?” Nick asked.
“I didn’t like her haircut,” I answered.
Everyone laughed even harder.
“That motherfucker whooped all of us in a matter of seconds,” Nick said.
“He sure did,” I agreed.
“And he was holding back,” Dudley added.
“He did take us by surprise,” Georgie said. “Next time we’ll be ready for him.”
“Take it from me, Georgie,” Nick said. “If he can whip us that easily, it won’t make much of a difference how ready we are. We could have a month to prepare ourselves, and he’d still kick our asses.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Georgie asked.
Everyone looked to me.
“We gotta get the fuck out of Dodge,” I answered. “The Master is out of our league. Add his followers to the mix, and none of us would even make it through the first round.”
“What about all the survivors?” Dudley asked.
“I think you guys cleared most of them out of the Westside,” I answered. “I’m sure there’s still more, but they’ll have to hold on until we can figure out a way to deal with the vampires. Maybe we can drop food and supplies to their locations. Give them enough to hold out until we can come up with a new game plan.”
“It’s a good idea,” Javie said. “We need to get out of this alive so we’re able to fight another day. If we hang around here any longer, all of us are going to get ourselves killed.”
“We need better weapons,” Nick said. “More powerful bullets might do the trick. Something that will put them on their ass with the first shot.”
“I like the sound of that,” Georgie said.
I was smiling. The team was already thinking about returning, and we hadn’t even left the area yet. It was good to see they were all aboard, but I was still pretty unhappy about retreating. I hate running away from a fight. It’s embarrassing.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll hang out here for the night because I don’t want to endanger any more helicopters. Come sunrise, we’ll fly out of here and figure out a better game plan before returning to deal with these bloodsuckers. Everyone agree?”
Everyone agreed.
“Hardin,” I said after tapping my earpiece. “Hardin, are you hearing all this?”
There was no response.
“Hardin?” I asked. “Are you there?”
I tapped and cursed for about ten minutes before giving up and asking the others to try and see if they could get through. None of them could, but we kept on trying. In fact, we were still trying to make contact with Hardin when the sun finally rose up in the sky and the time for making some choices was at hand.
“Well shit,” I said as I gazed out the boarded up window at the empty street. “I’m not sure what’s wrong, but it looks like we’re on our own. The suns up, so we won’t have any vampire problems. What do you say we just hop in the Jeeps and drive the fuck out of here?”
“Can we get through the gates around the city?” Georgie asked.
“I don’t have this little badge because it looks pretty,” I answered. “Besides, if the guards give us any problems we’ll just kick their ass.”
It didn’t take long for everyone to agree. The alternative was to sit in the house and wait for the vampires to come back for us, and nobody wanted to go through that again.
It didn’t take but a second for us to load up our meager supplies and head out the front door. The air was incredibly cold, so cold it actually made me shiver. The sky itself was a leaden grey. I guess if I thought about it, the weather had been turning colder and colder. There was a storm coming and it had been gathering its strength for a while now.
We crossed the street and headed into the park towards the Jeeps at a slow jog. It didn’t take but a second of looking at the vehicles to realize they were trashed.
The armored hoods were tweaked and bent from being forced open. I knew it was going to be hopeless, but I looked at the engines anyway. They were torn to pieces. The metal was bent and twisted. Some parts were crushed and others had been ripped away.
We had no vehicles.
The team had spread out in a circle around the Jeeps to give me some time to check things out. The survivors were next to me inside the protective ring. I didn’t know what to say to them as they all looked at me imploringly. Fortunately, Dudley came to my rescue.
“We have company.”
“How many?” I asked without bothering to look up from the demolished engines.
“There are two of them,” Dudley said.
“I’ll take care of it,” I announced as I rested my hand upon my tomahawk.
“They aren’t zombies,” Dudley said. “Not unless zombies have started carrying hunting rifles.”
That got my attention immediately.
I went over to Dudley and the two of us began to walk towards the armed newcomers. I allowed Merrick to come along as well. Odds were that they were good people, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. My MP7 was twisted around on its strap so that it was pretty much hanging on my back in a nonthreatening manner, but the Sig on my right side could be drawn, and fired, faster than most people could blink.
If one of them made a move, I was going to shoot both of them dead.
Both parties stopped about ten feet from one another in the middle of the park. Dudley seemed relatively calm. He’d seen me shoot before. I, on the other hand, was tense. I didn’t like them being armed. I didn’t like how they were the only survivors I’d seen walking around outside instead of hiding in a house and boarding up the windows.
The woman was the first to speak.
“Are you guys the Regulators?” she asked.
“That would be us,” Dudley said. “What are the two of you doing outside?”
“We were gathering supplies yesterday, but when we opened a door on this one house, the street suddenly began to fill up with zombies. We were able to get out and hide in a house up the road, but the entire area was way too hot for us to try and leave.”
“At least until you guys started clearing them out,” the man added. “How the Hell did you manage all that?”
“That wasn’t us,” Dudley said. “And trust me, you don’t want to know about it. I wish I didn’t.”
Our conversation was interrupted by pounding footsteps. The man tensed up and raised his rifle just a little bit higher. I responded by inching my hand closer to my pistol. Merrick sounded off with a low growl. I didn’t turn around to see who was running up behind us. I wasn’t about to take my eyes off the man and woman. Dudley however had no problems checking it out for me, and since he seemed unconcerned, I assumed that it was probably one of my teammates.
“Joe? Claudia?” Javie asked. “Is that you?”
“Javie?” the woman asked. “You’re a Regulator?”
“Yes,” Javie said with a smile. “I can’t believe you guys made it. This is freakin’ awesome. Dudley and Jaxon, allow me to introduce Joe and Claudia. I know them from college, and a school trip to England.”
Everyone instantly relaxed. Javie was a pretty good judge of people. If these two were friends of his, then they certainly weren’t a threat to me and mine. I immediately offered my hand along, and so did Dudley.
“So if it wasn’t you guys that took out all the zombies,” Joe asked. “Who was it?”
“Vampires,” Javie said. “Jaxon and Dudley killed a Master vampire’s daughter and now he wants to fight Jax and give him a slow death.”
“Are you kidding me?” Joe asked.
“What?” Claudia laughed. “You can accept zombies, but vampires give you pause?”
We all sort of chuckled at that. It was sort of funny how easily I accepted that a Master vampire was hunting me. Before I became the Guardian, I probably would have thought anyone believing in zombies and vampires was out of their minds. Now it seemed even vampires were easy to believe in.
“Are they the scary kind, or the teenage love story kind?” Claudia asked.
“Definitely the scary kind,” Dudley answered. “They drool this black slime and everything.”
“But they killed all the zombies?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “They only did that to get them out of the way. After the zombies, they brought down one of our helicopters when we tried to extract some survivors.”
“You guys are rescuing survivors still?” Claudia asked.
“That, and killing vampires,” Dudley said. “You two can join up with us, and as soon as we find a ride we’ll get you out of here.”
“We can’t leave,” Joe said. “There are too many people in this city that need our help, but I bet we can hook you up with a car, and we can certainly make room for your survivors if you want to follow us back to the church. It’s on Mesa, not very far from here.”
“What exactly are you guys up to?” Dudley asked.
“Not us,” Claudia said. “We just work for the Priest. We gather supplies, and look for survivors, but it’s the Priest that arranges everything. He’s the man in charge.”
“Do you have other survivors at this church?” I asked.
“About five hundred,” Joe answered. “It’s a tight fit, but we manage.”
“That explains why the team and I weren’t super busy while you were at the hotel,” Dudley said.
“I guess so,” I replied. “It also means we won’t be leaving the city unless we can get a hold of Hardin. I’m not leaving any survivors behind while the rest of us run for the hills.”
“You think the vampires would attack the church?” Dudley asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Probably,” Dudley answered after considering it for a bit. “That’d be an easy way to make good on the Master’s revenge. I’m sure they already know there are survivors there. I guess it’s best that we don’t take any chances. Maybe we can fortify this church and defend it.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I answered. I turned to Joe and Claudia. “So, who’s this Priest you mentioned? And how long has he been rescuing people?”
“He’s been rescuing people since this all started,” said Claudia. “And his name is Father Miguel Monarez, but everybody just calls him the Chainsaw Priest.”