by P. T. Hylton
Alex took a small step toward the closed door. “Looks that way.”
“That thing’s solid steel,” Hope said. “What the hell could have dented it like that?”
“Something that’s been pounding on it for one hundred and fifty years.” Alex took another step forward.
Each of the doors had a slot, to allow in a little light, Alex surmised. As soon as the beam from her headlamp fell across the slot, something slammed against the inside of the door, and the steel boomed like thunder with the force of the impact.
The thing inside the cell crashed against the door again, and this time the boom was accompanied by a cracking sound. The vampire was hitting the door with such force that it was breaking its own bones, Alex realized.
She glanced back at her team. Chuck was visibly shaken, and beads of sweat stood on his forehead. Hope didn’t look to be doing much better.
But everyone was holding fast, waiting for orders.
A sallow, thin finger poked through the slot in the door. Then another. Then a third. The vampire was clearly trying to push its hand through. The hand caught on the one-inch slot, but still the vampire kept pushing. The flesh of its hand tore and peeled back, until the muscles beneath were clearly visible.
The team watched in shocked horror.
After another moment, the vampire pulled back its ruined hand and put its face to the slot.
Alex fired, and the vampire squealed and fell backward.
“Oh, hell yeah, Captain!” Patrick shouted.
A whimpering sound from inside the cell confirmed Alex’s suspicions: the thing wasn’t dead yet.
Alex turned to Hope. “We need a one-foot-by-one-foot hole in this door.”
Hope nodded, then pulled the cutting tool out of her pack and went to work.
Alex couldn’t help but think about the last time she’d seen this tool used. Firefly had cut a hole in the floor, allowing them to escape to a vacant level of the nuclear power plant. A short while later, they’d escaped. All of them except Simmons.
Hope finished, and the piece of steel crashed to the floor, exposing the inside of the cell. The team stared in awe, most of them seeing a vampire for the first time.
Alex’s bullet had torn away part of the creature’s face, but as they watched, the wound was already healing. It stumbled forward, letting out a weak moan as it clambered toward the door. Alex considered whether this might be the most wretched creature in existence. The damn thing had spent one hundred fifty years alone in the dark, waiting for her to show up and kill it.
“This is the enemy,” she told the team. “You’ll see plenty more of them in your time with the GMT, but you’ll never forget your first. Take a good hard look.”
She fired two rounds into the creature’s heart, ending its miserable existence.
Alex stood in the doorway of the final building of ADX Florence. They'd successfully cleared the cell blocks, and this was the last building. Unfortunately, they only had an hour and a half of daylight left, and this building was significantly larger than the other eight.
“All right, folks, this is the time to focus up. We've had good luck so far, but the end of the day doesn't mean things are automatically going to be easy.”
With that, Alex stepped through the door. She immediately tensed at what she saw.
"So much for that good luck, Captain," Ed said as he sidled up beside her.
"You can say that again." Alex looked around, taking in the destruction around them. This building had clearly been the site of a firefight. It reminded her of the nuclear facility in Texas. That place had clearly been torn apart by a major battle, and this building was no different. They passed through a series of open gates and made their way to a large open common area, surrounded by two levels of cells.
Chuck stepped beside Alex. "Captain, do you think we should —?"
She held up a hand, silencing him.
A rustling noise on the second level caught her attention, and she stood stone-still, waiting to see if it would come again.
She didn’t have to wait long before a vampire stumbled out of one of the cells.
Alex remained frozen, her gaze fixed on the vampire as she silently willed her team not to move.
It didn't matter. As the vampire reached the waist-high rail, it breathed deeply through its strange, ruined nose, sniffing. Then it glared down at them, and its eyes locked on them.
Alex raised her pistol just as the creature vaulted the rail. It dove down at them, howling as it came. It stretched out its arms, revealing the web-like wings between its arms and torso.
Alex squeezed off three quick shots, killing the vampire before it hit the ground.
“Circle up!" she called to the team. “Eyes on those cells. We don't know how many more of those things are in here.”
A heavy silence filled the air as the team waited, gazing at the open cells a vampire could leap from at any moment.
“There!” Patrick called. He and Ed fired in unison, peppering the vampire with bullets as it came out of the lower-level cell to their right. The vampire fell backwards with the bullet holes all along its neck and shoulders, but it quickly got up again and lunged towards them.
Patrick and Ed let loose another heavy barrage of fire, and this time they removed the vampire’s head completely from its neck.
Another vampire leapt from a cell on the other side of the room, and Chuck raised his rifle, training it along with the vampire’s movements. The vampire moved around the group, putting Hope’s head directly between Chuck's gun and the creature.
“No!” Alex called. She swung her arm upward, slamming it against the bottom of the barrel just before Chuck fired. Thankfully, the shot went high.
Hope was ready to fire, but she recoiled and put a hand to her ear as Chuck's gun went off so close to her head.
Alex sprang into action. The vampire was heading straight for Hope now, and there was no way Hope would get her gun up in time to stop him.
Alex put three rounds in the vampire's chest. It dropped to the ground, but continued to squirm. Alex was almost glad. She drew her sword, then brought it down hard on the vampire’s neck. The decapitated head rolled two feet away.
The team formed back into a circle and waited a tense two minutes, trying to steady their breathing as the adrenaline coursed through them. No more vampires appeared.
When she was sure no more were coming, Alex turned to the team. "Let's keep moving."
There would be time for accolades and reprimands later. For now, they had work to do.
The flight back to New Haven was very different than the one to the prison had been. On the way to the mission, the ship had been filled with tension, a strange mix of fear and excitement. Now it was like the air had been released from a balloon. The tension was gone, but what remained was different from person to person.
Chuck sat in silence, his head down. Alex had yet to address his nearly shooting his teammate. She would do so when they got back, but she wasn't looking forward to the task. Killing vampires, she could do; having a difficult conversation with a subordinate was a whole other matter.
Hope was keeping to herself as well, but her demeanor seemed less upset and more reflective, as if she was going over the events of the mission second by second in her mind. Her hand occasionally went to the side of her head.
Alex touched her arm. "You okay?"
Hope nodded slowly. "I've got some ringing in my right ear, but shipshape, other than that." She nodded towards Chuck and lowered her voice when she spoke again. "Don't be too hard on him. It's my fault, as much as his. I should've gotten out of the way. Or taken on the vampire myself."
For a moment, Alex wasn't sure what to say. She had assumed Hope would be angry at Chuck. Alex certainly would've been. "It wasn't your fault. You stayed in formation."
"Yeah, but the vampire was in my quadrant. He was my responsibility. I should've taken him out before Chuck even had the chance to fire.”
Technically,
she was correct. The vampire was in her area of responsibility. Still, that was all the more reason for Chuck to not take a shot.
"You did fine," Alex assured her. "You kept your composure. You faced off against your first vamp, and you didn't freak out. That’s a pretty good start.”
Ed and Patrick sat across the aisle, excitedly recapping the events of the mission.
"You did pretty well, Ed," Patrick said with a sly smile. "It's a shame I had to take out that vampire for you."
Ed's eyes grew large. "What are you talking about? I blew its head off while you were shooting its shoulders."
Patrick shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Did you see the angle of the head, when it fell? The kill shot definitely came from my direction.”
Alex glared at them. "You're pretty proud of yourselves, are you?"
Patrick shrugged. "First time facing vampires. We walked away and they didn't. Seems like a win to me."
Alex fought the conflicting urges to smile and to walk over and smack the man. On the one hand, she completely understood where he was coming from. Hell, it hadn't been that long ago since she'd been saying very similar things to CB. On the other hand, she couldn't afford that kind of naïveté on the team.
“We walked away because there were only three of them. I've never seen vampires so groggy. You guys acted as individuals, not as a team. If there'd been more than three of them, or if it'd been night time, they’d be licking our blood off their lips right now."
"Captain Goddard." It was Owl speaking through Alex's earpiece. "It's time to check in with CB. You want to give him the mission report, or should I?”
Alex touched the radio on her chest. “Nah, I got it." It was as good an excuse as any to get away from her team for a bit.
She made her way to the cockpit, and plopped down on the seat next to Owl.
Owl glanced at her and grinned. "Newbies, huh?”
“You said it." Then, remembering she was the captain now, she quickly added, “They’ll be okay. They just need to get into the swing of things a little."
She hailed CB and gave him the full report, including the number of vamps they'd killed. She considered leaving out the part where Chuck had almost shot Hope, but she decided she better not start her new position with a lie of omission.
"You want me to talk to him?" CB asked.
"No. Training and discipline both fall under my jurisdiction. I'm on it."
"Good." He paused for a moment. "I hope you liked the prison."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? Why's that?”
"Because Fleming’s pushing hard. You're going to be spending a lot of time down there in the next few weeks."
7
Jaden arrived in the conference room before the others, and he took his seat near the head of the table. Over the past few hundred years, he’d gotten pretty good at time management.
He’d purposely scheduled this meeting for shortly before sunrise, as he did most meetings with the human leaders. It allowed him a hard out, so the conversations couldn’t go on for too long.
The vampires and humans in Agartha mostly stayed apart, mainly because the vampires slept all day. Many humans in the city had absolutely no contact with Jaden and his team. Jaden liked it that way. It kept things clean. The vampires did their job of keeping the humans alive, and the humans did…whatever it was humans do. It had been so long since Jaden had been one himself that he barely remembered.
The others trickled in over the next few minutes. Robert―Jaden’s fellow vampire and right-hand man―sat across from Jaden. The other two, George, from Engineering, and Cynthia, the human leader of Agartha, entered together. As always, Cynthia took the seat at the head of the table. Positions of power were important to humans, and it didn’t much matter to Jaden what chair he sat on. They were all short-sighted, silly human concerns to him.
Along with time management, the years had brought a bit of perspective and the ability to find amusement in the fleeting things too many humans stressed over.
After they’d exchanged greetings, Cynthia got right to the purpose for their meeting. “Our communications department let me know they’re getting low on copper. If their project is going to stay on track, they need more.”
“No problem. We’ll make that a priority on our next supply run.” Jaden waited for her to continue. That information could have easily been conveyed in a quick radio communication. She clearly wanted to talk about more than that. He suspected he knew what was coming next; he’d been waiting for it since the New Haven crew had shown up on their doorstep in desperate need of help.
She looked Jaden in the eye. “How long have you known about the existence of New Haven?”
There it was.
He didn’t hesitate before responding. “Ever since it was built. A hair under two hundred years, give or take a decade.”
Cynthia gritted her teeth, as she always did when unsuccessfully trying to hide her anger. “So, why’d you keep it to yourself? Didn’t you think the fact that we were not the last humans on Earth might have been important for us to know?”
“No, actually.”
George and Cynthia exchanged a glance, and George cleared his throat nervously. “Could you elaborate?”
Jaden smiled patiently. Sometimes, he felt like he spent half his time trying to get humans to think rationally. It was a battle that he only occasionally won, but it was always an interesting challenge. “There are only two slivers of humanity left. Agartha and New Haven. We decided early on that it would be safer to keep them apart.”
“Why?” George asked. “From a practical perspective, wouldn’t it be easier to survive if we worked together? If we shared ideas? Resources? New Haven travels to places that we can’t. It’s much easier for them to get supplies from anywhere on Earth.”
Good old George, always thinking like an engineer.
“From a practical perspective, sure,” Jaden agreed. “But we had to think more broadly than that.”
Cynthia’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“At the end of the infestation, things got bad.” Jaden briefly considered how deeply to delve into this topic. Some of the things he’d seen―things done by vampires to humans, and things done by humans to themselves―he still didn’t like to think about. It was the stuff of nightmares, even for a vampire as old as he was. Those were dark times; times when the light of humanity very nearly went out.
After a few moments, he decided not to elaborate. It was difficult for the humans of Agartha to comprehend the scope of the pre-infestation world. Which meant they couldn’t very well understand what its destruction had been like.
“Let’s say a leader with evil intentions takes control of one city or the other,” Jaden explained. “Or maybe worse, a foolish leader. It’s not inconceivable that a city could be wiped out because of a few foolish decisions. Not with all the Ferals roaming the Earth. Now, imagine that leader controlling both cities.”
“So New Haven is the backup plan, in case we blow it?” George asked.
Robert smiled. “Depends on your perspective. Maybe we’re the backup plan.”
“The point is,” Jaden interjected, “we’ve kept the cities apart for a reason. If our people, who have spent their lives inside a mountain, find out there’s a city on an airship traveling the globe, don’t you think they’ll want to take a ride?”
“I know I do,” George said.
“Exactly. And the same goes for the people of New Haven. If they find out about a safe city on the surface, I’ll bet a bunch of them will want to declare their endless voyage at an end. I say we keep the existence of New Haven secret for now.”
Cynthia frowned. “I see your logic, but we’ll have to do a better job keeping any visitors from New Haven contained. Too many people know already for us to keep this secret forever.”
“Speaking of visitors,” George said, “it looks like we’re getting another one. Jessica would like to spend some time here. She wants to work with me and excha
nge information. Even if the general populations of our two cities can’t work together, maybe our engineers can.”
Jaden nodded slowly. “That’s smart. And it will give us the chance to extract more information about New Haven.”
A sly smile crept across Cynthia’s face. “So, you’re not above all our conniving human ways after all.”
“It’s not conniving, it’s just caution. There’s so much we don’t know about New Haven. Their political structure, the quality of their living conditions, their general outlook on life. For all we know, they’ve started a religious cult that worships the moon.”
“Now that would be information we could use,” Robert joked. “We can say the moon told us they’re supposed to give us all their food.”
Jaden ignored the comment. “Caution is the name of the game here. Ideally, we want a healthy, productive relationship with New Haven, but we have to be ready for things to go the other way. I’m going to have my team prepare the surface-to-air missiles in case of an attack.”
“Agreed,” Cynthia confirmed. “If they want to be friends, we can make that happen, but we’re not going to sit here like suckers if they try to take advantage of us. Their city is a flying fortress, for all we know.”
Jaden raised a finger. “The thing about flying fortresses is that they can be shot down. I much prefer my fortresses on solid ground. If it comes to a fight, we won’t be the ones tumbling out of the sky.”
CB’s morning was not going well. He’d already had to stomach a meeting with Fleming, who’d told him he wanted more frequent reports. Never mind that CB was already up to his eyeballs in administrative work.
Work that he should be doing now. Instead, he was heading to Sparrow’s Ridge, looking for an old friend.
The GMT was off serving as the world’s most highly-trained transportation service and delivering Jessica down to Agartha. CB hoped he’d have good news to share with Alex when she got back.
He found the man he was looking for in badge headquarters in Sparrow’s Ridge.