“So, what do you think?” Neko murmured as the wind whipped her pink hair around her angular cheekbones. “Can you shoot them?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” I said as I did a quick zig-zag in the water to try to make the waves choppier. “I know it’s hard to hit a moving target, and I’m guessing it’s even harder when you’re moving, too.”
“But you’re a good shot, right?” Brianna asked. “You look like you’d be a good shot.”
“Because his guns are so big?” Neko snickered. “Girl, you’ve got a one-track mind.”
“No!” The blonde hid her face in her hands. “Sam just looks like he knows what he’s doing, that’s all.”
“Uhhh, not really,” I laughed as I steered the Summer Breeze to the left again. “Especially not while on a moving boat.”
“There’s a first time for everything, right?” Neko smiled.
“You would know,” I said with a wink.
“Okay, so I’m not sure what’s happening here,” Brianna sighed, “but maybe you two can do a little less flirting, and we can do a little more planning how to take out a whole boat full of fucking vamp cops?”
“Hey, I’m not the one who keeps talking about Sam’s guns, remember?” the petite Japanese girl replied.
“I think I can try to shoot them, if one of you can take the wheel for me and keep us moving,” I said. “Any takers?”
“I can do it,” Brianna announced.
“You know this isn’t like your car, right?” Neko demanded.
“Ugh, I’m not that blonde,” the other girl replied. “My uncle had a boat, and he taught me how to sail when I was a kid.”
“Stop your engine!” a loudspeaker suddenly called out from the police boat behind us. “Stop and put your hands up, and we may spare your lives when we board!”
“Yeah, because that sounds so convincing,” I deadpanned.
“You have ten seconds to comply,” the loudspeaker boomed. “Ten, nine…”
“I think they just made up our minds for us,” I groaned. “Brianna, you better hurry up and get your blonde ass over here.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Brianna said, and instantly she moved toward me across the unsteady boat.
“Just stay low,” I warned, “and Neko, you better stay down too, and hold onto something.”
As Brianna took the wheel, the pink-haired girl dropped to the floor of the boat, and I pulled my Mark 23 out of its holster. I kept my knees bent low, so I wouldn’t lose my balance when the shooting started, and I immediately raised my pistol to aim at the cops on the boat behind us.
I could see the pilot, plus three others who all stood along the side of the boat with their own pistols raised. They looked like they had body armor on, but none of them wore helmets or full riot gear, so I figured that I had a decent chance of actually taking them out.
If they didn’t shoot me right through the middle of the forehead first.
“…two, one!” the loudspeaker finished.
“Stay down!” I shouted.
I aimed my .45 at the pilot, but he ducked down just as the bullet left my gun, so it disappeared somewhere in the darkness of the river behind him. But as I started to readjust my aim on another one of the cops, the rest of the vamps opened fire on the Summer Breeze.
Immediately, I dropped to my stomach and caught Neko’s eyes across the floor of the boat. She looked even paler than she had in the library, and I had a feeling that if she got hit with a stray bullet, she might not make it. Between her time with Isaac and the fact that I had just fed from her in the library, I knew she was low on blood and hadn’t had enough food to make up for how much she had given me.
“Just stay put,” I hissed. “I’ll get us out of this.”
“I know you will,” the pink-haired girl whispered. “You’ve got something they don’t.”
“What’s that?” I growled.
“You’ve got us,” Neko said with a shy smile.
Right on cue, Brianna suddenly took a hard left, so the Summer Breeze bounced on its own waves as the blonde took us out of the cops’ direct line of fire. The moment I heard their gunfire pause, I jumped back up, steadied myself in the rocking boat, and took aim at one of the cops on the side of the police boat.
The bullet hit him squarely in the shoulder, but even though the cop dropped down, I hadn’t seen a spray of blood, so I guessed that I might have just hit his body armor. When he didn’t immediately pop back up, I swiveled the sights of my .45 toward the next vamp.
Before I could fire another round, the vamps had all adjusted their aims, so they opened fire on me again. I dropped to the floor like before, and again, Brianna veered the boat around to try to keep us safe.
“Turn it around!” I told the blonde. “Take the boat back up the Hudson, so we can buy some more time!”
“You got it, Captain,” Brianna replied.
As she started to bring the boat around in a circle, I got ready to spring up and shoot again when we came alongside the police boat. This was going to be even harder than I’d imagined, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, there were at least four vampires on the other boat, and that meant four guns against just mine. Besides, if they got shot anywhere but in their skulls, they would still be able to recover, but if either of the human girls were wounded, I couldn’t say the same thing for them.
“Passing by them in three,” Brianna called out, “two… one!”
I rolled to my knees with my gun raised, and I fired three more bullets in the general direction of the police boat. I figured that quantity was probably better than quality in this case, but I had to drop back to my stomach before I saw if any of my shots had hit a target.
“You still okay?” I called to Brianna.
“Yep!” the blonde shouted. “But hang on, it’s about to get bumpy!”
We hit the wake of the police boat a second later, and the bounce was almost enough to pitch the blonde right over the side of the Summer Breeze. She managed to cling on to the steering wheel, while Neko clung grimly to the side of the boat.
When the waves settled down a few seconds later, I pushed myself back up to my feet to see where the police boat was now. They had only just turned themselves around, so they had slowed down enough that they weren’t right on our tail anymore.
Of course, we were also headed in the opposite direction of where we needed to go, but that just gave us a little extra time to take out the bloodsuckers, so we wouldn’t lead them right back to the other girls in the parking garage.
As the cops turned their boat around, I was able to see that all four vamps were still alive, so the one that I had wounded must have already recovered. But at least I didn’t see any more hidden somewhere else on their boat.
After all, four armed and armored vamps were more than enough to deal with.
I only had two bullets left in my .45, but I wasn’t very confident that any of them would be enough to take down a vamp. Sure, the rounds were fucking powerful, but they seemed to have vests on, so even if I managed to hit one, it might not be enough to keep them down for very long.
I fixed my sights on the vamp closest to the rear of the police boat and aimed at his torso. It was the most well-protected part of his body, but it was also the biggest target, so I had the best chance of hitting him there. I exhaled to steady myself, squeezed the trigger twice in a row, and watched as the vamp staggered backward at the sudden impact.
The other cops all ran toward him, but they couldn’t get to him in time, so the bloodsucker just tumbled off the back of the police boat. Of course, as soon as he was gone, the rest of the cops seemed to forget that he had ever existed, so I guessed that the fallen vamp was on his own to either drown or swim his injured self back to shore.
But the wounded vamp wasn’t my problem anymore. I still had three fuckers left to deal with, and they had all just turned their attention and their guns back to me.
“Brianna, get down!” I shouted as I reali
zed that even the pilot was about to open fire on us.
“But the--” she started.
I lunged forward, grabbed the blonde by the waist, and pulled her down to the floor of the boat, just before the bloodsuckers opened fire.
Bullets ripped into the side of the Summer Breeze, and the night air filled with the sound of metal on metal. I covered Brianna’s body with my own as the bullets tried to tear apart the boat, and I felt her breasts rise and fall underneath me as her breaths became shallower and faster.
Since I had tackled Brianna away from the controls, our boat had started to slow down, so I pushed myself up off the blonde and crawled over to the foot throttle. The cops continued to shoot at us, but I mashed down on the throttle so the boat zoomed ahead again.
But I knew that if I didn’t want to wreck the Summer Breeze, I needed to stand up and actually steer her, and that meant I might have to take a bullet or two. I reached one hand up and tugged the steering wheel a little to the left, but I couldn’t see where we were going, so I just wiggled the wheel back and forth to try to keep us more or less on a straight course.
“You have more bullets, right?” Neko panted from the back of our boat.
“Yeah, if I reload,” I said, “but I think I might need to switch guns. I need something that will pack a bigger punch.”
“There should be a flare gun somewhere on board,” Brianna said. “That could do some damage.”
“I think he probably means his rifle, Bree!” Neko yelled.
“Yeah, but if you two could find the flare gun, that would be good, too,” I said. “Just stay down, okay?”
I slipped my Mark 23 back into its holster and then unslung the Daniel Defense rifle from my back. I would have to steer the boat first, so I wouldn’t be able to shoot right away, but I wanted to be ready whenever I got my chance.
I waited until the cops all paused to reload, and then with the rifle still in one hand, I jumped up, pushed down harder on the throttle with my foot, and grabbed the steering wheel. The Summer Breeze was headed straight for the Jersey shoreline, so I steered us to the right and back out into the middle of the river.
When I had the steering wheel perfectly adjusted to keep us on a straight course ahead, I knew that would have to be good enough for now if I ever wanted to return fire.
“Come here, and keep our speed up,” I told Brianna, “and try to reach one hand up just to hold the steering wheel in place. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” the blonde replied. “Neko, you’ll have to find the flare. Try one of the compartments along the side of the boat.”
“I’m on it,” the petite Japanese girl said as she started to crawl forward across the floor.
As soon as Brianna took over the controls, I raised my rifle to my shoulder and swung around to take aim at the cops behind us. Even as I aimed my sights at the pilot, I realized that the vampires had just finished reloading their weapons, and now they were all about to open fire again.
“Fuck!” I muttered, but I squeezed the trigger anyway.
The rifle recoiled hard into my shoulder, but my stance was strong enough that it didn’t make me stumble. Instead, I watched my bullet soar into the darkness just above the pilot’s head, and I swore silently.
I had forgotten that I hadn’t really gotten a chance to adjust the sights of my rifle yet, so they were still a little bit off. And that meant I only had four more rounds left in my rifle before I would have to pause long enough reload.
Even though the cops were all about to shoot at us again, I didn’t drop back down to the floor of the boat. I was in a good position, and I had been so close to a perfect hit on the pilot that I wanted to try just one more time before I took cover.
I lowered the barrel of the rifle lower than it looked like I needed to, made sure the rifle stock was firmly pressed into my shoulder, and started to squeeze the trigger again.
Just as my finger was about to finish pulling the trigger, the bloodsucking cops opened fire, and I felt something like a bee-sting in my left shoulder. As the pain shuddered through my body, I felt the rifle shift position, but it was too late to take my finger off the trigger, so I fired anyway, and the shot flew out into the darkness of the river.
“Fucking shit!” I dropped down to the floor of the boat and clenched my left fist.
The bullet in my shoulder felt like someone had taken a hot poker and shoved it into my skin all the way down to the bone. My teeth ground against each other, but the pain was bad enough that I couldn’t even think about shooting again until my body pushed the bullet out.
“Sam!” Neko cried as she scrambled across the floor of the boat toward me. “Sam, are you okay?”
The petite Japanese girl crawled on top of me and put her hands on either side of my face. Her pink hair brushed against my cheeks, and I forced my clenched eyelids open to see the concern in the girl’s dark eyes.
“Just need… a second,” I panted, and then I felt the white-hot bullet start to move back out of my body.
“What can I do?” Neko murmured, but she didn’t drop her hands away from my face.
My shoulder gave one final throb, and then my body pushed the bullet out of the wound, so it fell out and rolled across the floor of the boat. The wound sealed up quickly behind it, and the pink-haired girl just stared at my shoulder for a second when she realized that it had already healed.
“Shit,” the petite girl said. “I guess you’ve got this one covered.”
“I still appreciate it,” I said with a smile. “But I’ll tell you what you can do-- you can keep trying to find that flare gun for me.”
“On it,” Neko said with a nod, and then she climbed off of me and started back across the boat.
She and Brianna were both careful to stay low, so none of the vamps’ bullets hit either of them. As I crawled toward the back of our boat, I realized that the soreness in my shoulder had already faded, and I was more glad than ever that I had fed from Neko before we left the library.
When I reached the back of the Summer Breeze, I propped my rifle up on the back corner of the boat and got into a kneeling position behind it. The cops were about to have to reload, and since I really wanted my next shot to count, I would have to take my time. I would probably only be able to get one round off before I had to take cover again.
“Do you think you can swing her around for me again, Bree?” I called out. “You can stand up when I say the word.”
“As long as I can stand up, I can turn us around,” the blonde replied. “You just say when.”
Another handful of bullets pinged off the back of the Summer Breeze, and then there was a slight pause.
“Now!” I shouted.
The curvy blonde was on her feet in an instant. As our boat began to swing around, I lined up the sights of my weapon, took aim at the pilot again, and waited until we just began to pass the police boat. Then, while the bloodsucking cops were still mid-reload, I squeezed the trigger.
This time, the bullet sailed through the air and landed straight in the middle of the pilot’s face. He didn’t even have time to be surprised. The bullet just split his skull apart, ripped out the back of his head, and then fell somewhere into the river behind him, just as the vamp’s lifeless body dropped down.
“Only two left,” I muttered.
As soon as the other cops saw that their pilot was dead, one of the remaining vamps scrambled toward the wheel to take control. The other bloodsucker tried to aim at me again, but by then, Brianna had steered us past the police boat, and we were headed south down the Hudson again.
I only had two rounds left in my rifle, and then I would have to reload both guns before I could shoot them again. But we had already been on the river longer than I wanted to be, so I wanted to finish our fight as quickly as possible before the cops radioed in for any more back-up.
“Hold her steady!” I shouted to Brianna.
“Just, uh, tell me if I need to get down, okay?” the blonde replied. “I’m too
scared to look behind me!”
“I’ll warn you before they start shooting again,” I promised as I tried to steady my rifle sights on one of the two remaining vampire cops. “Just keep your eyes on the river.”
“Yep, got it,” Brianna said.
“Neko,” I said “have you had any luck finding that flare gun yet?”
“Not yet,” the pink-haired girl called back. “But I’m about to check the compartments on the other side!”
“Let me know as soon as you find it,” I said. “I might have an idea.”
The vamp who had just taken over the wheel was still trying to get his bearings, so the police boat had fallen further behind us. It was still close enough that our bullets would easily reach each other, but I was less than confident about my ability to hit my targets now that we were a little further away.
I had already made more noise with my guns than I had ever meant to, but it wasn’t like the bloodsuckers had left me with much of a choice. I just hoped that no other vamps would pay too much attention to the sound of random gunfire coming from the river, or that even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint our exact location.
That was the only good thing about a gunfight on moving boats-- at least no one could track down our exact position, just as long as we stayed on the move.
“How close are we to Governors Island?” I asked Brianna. “Can you see it?”
“I can’t really see that far ahead,” the blonde replied. “In case you forgot, it’s not like we have the boat lights on or anything.”
“Then how the fuck are you driving the boat?” Neko demanded as she continued to rummage through the boat’s side compartments.
“I’m just using the lights on either side of the river to keep a course in the middle,” Brianna said with a shrug. “It’s working, right?”
Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth (Book 3): Vampire Lord 3 Page 23