Blood Shadow: Book of Samuel
Page 20
changing into a hippo that crushed the injured parties on contact. The line continued with Daniel as a vampire, Nicole as a bottle-nose dolphin, Carla as a pit bull, Andrew as his favorite shark, Brandon Justice as a centaur, Valerie as a mermaid, Joe as a bird man, Garrison as an Orca killer whale, Belinda as a vampire, Agent Blake as a ram, Maxwell as a lion, which was the biggest cat anyone had ever seen, Aaron as a wolf, Sharon as a mermaid, as she crossed the streams without even knowing it, and Cal, Thaddeus and Emily made up the end of the wave formation in protection bubbles holding swords.
By the time the 200 vampires and protectors from Lowery’s crew got to the back of the line, there wasn’t a single one that hadn’t been sliced, diced, shredded, chomped, or liquefied. Hartwell and his group looked around and rejoiced as they changed back into their human forms.
Back at the Beach Haven Inn, Lowery sat back in his pool lounge chair and sensed that a few hundred of his men and women had perished, but he knew that once the sun came up, they would live for another day. He screamed at Ellison, “Send 400 in this time!”
Ellison was about to grab on to the nearest vampire for transportation, but Lowery decided to prolong the agony of waiting for him.
“Not yet, Abraham! It’s not your time yet!”
Ellison spit in disgust on the ground and then gave the order, “Next block of 400, you’re up!”
“Keep it coming, Maxie!” an enthusiastic Hartwell yelled down the line to his grandson.
Although Hartwell knew what the eventual outcome would be, he was still happy to be doing what he loved best by doing battle with any worthy adversary.
He looked back at his most worthy opponent, Calvin Brewster, and smiled, “This is a lot more fun than I remember.”
Cal returned the smile, “Tell me about it!”
The vampires were always thinking neatness second first, so they cleaned the bodies off the main part of the field and to the periphery like a bowling alley pin sweeper. Lowery’s second wave of vampires and protectors received the same instructions as they first wave and came in as served on a platter for Max’s wave strategy.
Team Hartwell buzzed through the 400 combatants in only a few seconds more than it took to dispatch of the first 200, employing the same images they used the first time around.
Lowery was very casual at first, sipping a human blood margarita with a long straw before he started to become frustrated with the ease at which Hartwell’s crew was dispatching of his people.
“Ellison!” Lowery shouted as his protector was in front of him instantly and instinctively.
“They’ve easily dispatched of our first 600, do you have any ideas?”
“Do I have any ideas?” Ellison thought to himself. “I have had great ideas for years and do you listen to me?”
He obviously spent too long on the internal rant, “Well do you?” Lowery impatiently asked.
“I got this boss. Let me handle it from here,” he replied.
Lowery lacked the necessary motivation to come up with an alternate plan, so he offered retribution as his incentive.
“You’re not going to let those hunters keep knocking us down, are you? Because if you do, it’s going to be your hide next.”
Ellison didn’t even here the last thing that Lowery said, because he had been making idle threats at him for over a century without actually following through. The proof in that theory was the fact that Ellison was still around and acting as Lowery’s protector and – for the most part – his executive assistant.
There were still a few thousand vampires and protectors left and Ellison had a good idea what strategy he would implore even before he hit the ground of the great lawn at Beach Haven Park. He went with a party of 100 fighters, and watched as they were mowed down by the wave of Hartwell’s people. Ellison had given instructions to the remaining members of Lowery’s posse to follow up and blanket the sky in a wide formation a few minutes after he left with the original party.
Maxwell was feeling good about what his group had accomplished, as nobody on the team had suffered as much as a scratch through the first three rounds of eliminating 700 of Lowery’s people. Although Belinda did complain for a brief moment, “Oh, I broke a nail,” and then a second later her advanced healing powers kicked in. “Never mind! It healed back up!”
Just as Max glibly said, “This isn’t so bad,” the bright, moon-lit sky darkened as if impacted by a lunar eclipse. The collective breadth of the force that was coming their way covered the entire sky and cast a huge shadow over the park.
Ellison communicated with his horde even before they hit the ground. “No one is to approach these people until I give the order. If you follow me, we will emerge victorious on this field today!”
Lowery’s gang landed in the field in front of Hartwell and his family, a good 200 yards ahead in the clearing. They were at least one hundred across and about 25 deep by the time they came to a standstill.
“Maxwell said the one thing that was on everyone’s mind, “Holy sh…”
Grandma’ Maggie, the school librarian, altered Maxwell’s intention and finished his thought for him “Schnitzel!”
“Schnitzel?” Daniel questioned.
She replied, “It was the first sh-sounding word I could think of.”
“You used to make great schnitzel back in the old days, dear,” Hartwell chimed in.
Thaddeus was interested, “We should put that on the menu.”
Garrison was also a fan of the old-school dish, “Yeah count me in on that.”
Nicole was not amused at her son’s foul mouth, “I don’t want to hear you say words like that again, Maxwell!”
“But, mom!” Maxwell whined, as his personality was much more juvenile without his wife Kayla around to provide the backbone.
Hartwell was never one to give up, but he was thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spare his family some serious pain.
“What do we do now, Maxwell?”
Max was obviously the wrong person to ask for leadership at that point.
He feebly said, “Lawnmower formation,” but Agent Blake replied, “That’s an awful big lawn, Max!”
“Yes it is,” Hartwell said with a straight face, although he was smiling broadly inside.
Lowery’s mob was about as disorganized as any bunch he had seen. It reminded him of the first night he met Garrison, as he and his protector made a weak attempt to escape the focused and skilled pursuit of Thaddeus Brewster. The army facing them was already soft and Hartwell didn’t want to use his family to sharpen their skills in any way.
“Lawnmower it is,” Hartwell said to Max and the group, knowing full well that an advance like that in one single line would be relatively easy for a huge block of fighters to counteract.
It turned out that Hartwell was half as accurate as he had to be. Their all-blade ground attack efficiently mowed down the first seven rows of Lowery’s men, including an astonished Ellison, who tried to run away but was Ginsued by Cal and Thaddeus, who definitely had it out for him.
Rows eight to 25 went airborne to avoid the lawnmower and then quickly descended on the group of 18, putting a quick end to the battle by killing 14 of the available players before putting an end to Hartwell by cleanly slicing off his head from about 15 separate angles. The fight came to an abrupt end, as Thaddeus pulled Cal and Emily under a pile of bodies so that no one would discover that they had escaped danger. Kayla’s protection had once again proved to be effective, but it did little to stop Lowery’s mob from claiming victory on this night.
Lowery sat back in his chair and closed his eyes as he breathed a sigh of genuine satisfaction, with a small touch of relief. He opened his eyes and looked out into the sky as his minions were returning.
“That’s one,” he said, fully expecting his plan of ridding the planet of Hartwell to fully materialize.
TWENTY-FIVE
Lowery’s remaining army had vacated the f
ield and Hartwell’s surviving soldiers waited a few minutes to make sure the coast was clear before emerging from under the pile of fallen comrades. It wasn’t pretty on the bottom of that pile but hunters Thaddeus, Cal and Emily Brewster were unfazed by all of the blood and dismemberment around them.
“Wow! These guys really know their way around with a blade,” Thaddeus said as he looked at a few of his people.
Cal, as usual, was unimpressed, “There were like 2,000 of them! Eventually someone had to hit the mark with a shot.”
“How many lives does Hartwell have left?”
Thaddeus was the always good with numbers leading back to their days as invincible bank robbers.
“He’s got more than 60.”
Emily rolled her eyes, “Then we better to think of something, because this guy is not going to stop until he runs out of time.”
Thaddeus was contrite, “That could be a long couple of months on the bottom of the pile.”
“I won’t go out like that!” Cal said defiantly.
His father smiled, “I know you won’t, Calvin. You never do.”
The three surviving members of the fighting Hartwell’s managed to get all of the body parts of the expired members into the sun room of the house, which had a decided Eastern exposure to take full advantage of the early morning healing powers of the sunrise. They all showered in their separate bedrooms and then went into the kitchen for a late night/early morning snack.
Samuel was fast asleep after trying to stay up for the better part