The Dark Messiah

by Michael Anderle

  The three men turned around, looking behind them and then to both sides. Hank grabbed Izzy’s attention pointing to his own eyes and then pointing outside. Izzy nodded and moved forward to get the best view outside he could.

  Hank got Calvin’s attention. Hank pointed a finger up, and Calvin nodded. The two men headed towards the back of the lobby, heading for the door to the stairs.

  —

  Jacqueline peeked around the rocks once the bullets stopped flying. She stayed where she was, keeping an eye on the front of the building some forty yards away.

  —

  Calvin licked his lips and reached for the doorknob. With his enhanced reaction speed from drinking the vampire blood, he was able to block his face with his arm when the whole door erupted out of the doorway and slammed into him, both of them passing Hank who had been to the side, his gun at the ready. Finally, Calvin landed, hard. The door continued past him to BANG into the wall behind him.

  Hank pulled the trigger of the shotgun just a moment after Calvin, and the door, had shot past him into the lobby area.

  He racked another shell into the barrel and peeked around the corner, quickly.

  Nothing there.

  “You ok?” Hank called back to the moaning and groaning Calvin.

  “Yeah,” Calvin coughed out, “be good in about twenty days or so.” he rolled over and spit blood on the floor.

  “Well, get the fuck up and over here!” Hank hissed, “I’m not sticking my head in there while…”

  Hank never saw the pistol that unexpectedly appeared around the corner and fired. He never finished his sentence as his body crumpled, his shotgun firing when his hand hit the floor, blowing off his foot.

  —

  Izzy heard the bang, the shot, and the guys yelling…then, he heard Calvin as he started screaming in fear. Two separate shots from Calvin’s rifle had occurred before it went full auto and the screaming kept going until his magazine was empty.

  Then Calvin’s screaming stopped.

  Izzy looked around, then he started backing out of the building. He stumbled over a dead body as he was walking backward. His arms flailed for a second, but he kept his eyes up, looking into the shadows inside the building.

  “Izzy…” A male voice called out from inside.

  “Leave me alone!” He screamed back.

  “But why, Izzy?” the voice mocked him. “Didn’t you want my blood, Izzy?”

  “Leave me alone, Demon!” Izzy screamed as he tried to back up faster, “I swear to God I’ll kick your ass!”

  The laughing coming from the building didn’t do anything to settle Izzy’s nerves.

  Finally, some hundred feet from the entrance the stranger with no hair could be seen in the building’s doorway. “I’m right here, Izzy!” the man spoke up, holding his hands out, “Come kick my ass, Izzy!”

  “I’ll do it!” Izzy licked his lips and kept the man in his sight, “Believe me!”

  “No,” the stranger shook his head, “no you won’t, Izzy.”

  “What makes you think I won’t?” Izzy screamed back.

  As he finished his question, a sword entered his back, beneath his protective jacket and a woman’s voice hissed in his ear.

  “Because Justice is waiting to send you to Hell!” she spat.

  Jacqueline pulled the sword out of the man after his gun clattered to the ground. His body was falling to the side, while one hand grasped at his wound, the other trying to stop his fall. Jacqueline didn’t see an easy way to slice his neck, he had some sort of metal around it.

  “Fuck it!” She grabbed the Wakizashi and turned it down, using her enhanced strength and anger to drive it through the protective gear and into the man’s back. He spasmed, in even greater pain. She put a foot on his back, pressing him into the concrete.

  Michael walked up beside her, “Next time,” he spoke in a normal, conversational voice, “you can slice through the vein under the arm to bleed him out. It isn’t as satisfying, but it saves having to sharpen the sword later.”

  She watched the man squirm, still in pain, before finally lying still. She looked up to him, “Next time?”

  Michael shrugged and looked around, the sun was higher in the morning sky, but some rays were still blocked by the husks of the old buildings. “It seems this world has more dishonorable things happening as normal now than I could have ever believed.” He paused to look at her, “And that is saying a lot.”

  “Come,” he told her, “clean your sword and let’s go. We have supplies to pick up and places to be.”

  Jacqueline pushed her foot down on the body as she yanked the sword back out and turned to jog back to where she had placed the scabbard. She stopped, kissed her fingers and put it on one of the rocks, “I’ll never forget, Father. You were ever my rock, and will be the rest of my life.”

  After a moment of silence, she turned and jogged back, wiping the blood off the sword on the dead man’s pants before scabbarding it and catching up to the vampire, “So, can I call you Mike?”

  “No,” He told her, the two of them walking out through the open gate. Someone must have run off during the night, leaving the way open.

  “How about…” She had started before Michael cut her off.

  “You have the choice of Michael or Michael.” He told her, “Of course, there is always Master,” he finished a moment later.

  The voices, carrying back into the Pack’s encampment, floated on the morning wind, “I think I’ll stick with calling you, Michael.” A moment later, “Where are we going?”

  Michael rattled off an address.

  “Why there?”

  “We are following clues, Jacqueline,” any further answers, if there were any, were lost to the wind.

  Europe

  The older Vampire pointed to a section on the map, “There are people in North America who understand about us, the UnknownWorld. You do not need to be hidden, as we are still doing here. Soon, we will have the power we need and we will pull it from the Fallen Lands, taking over the City-States here in Europe. Then, we’ll consolidate our power across the Atlantic before invading more lands.”

  He turned to Donovan and said in a dry tone, “No need to duplicate Napoleon’s mistakes.”

  “What will be my command?” Donovan asked.

  The Duke patted Donovan on his shoulder, “Sufficient, have faith. We are pulling assets out of my cities here to support you for this operation. We have acquired multiple Zeppelins for your invasion of the New York City-State. You will need to have enough of our kind to keep the Nosferatu controlled. If you don’t, then they could consume those on the ships.”

  Donovan nodded his understanding.

  The Nosferatu would kill those running the ship, and then they would lose the ship, the supplies, and the Nosferatu which were their primary weapons.

  “Then that is my constraint,” Donovan mused, and the Duke simply nodded his head in agreement.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Michael was discovering a side of Jacqueline he had yet to experience.

  Chatterbox.

  Actually, he considered, he should upgrade her to inquisitive chatterbox.

  The two of them headed across the city, encountering groups of people on two occasions. Both times, as soon as they recognized the black coated man with no hair, they turned the corner, or turned around and headed back down the street.

  And then, turned the corner.

  “Why is everyone dodging us?” Jacqueline asked, “Joshua said something about you killing Kraven. So, is everyone thinking Kraven’s goons are after you?”

  “I doubt it,” Michael replied matter-of-factly, his eyes constantly sweeping the area, his senses pushed out far.

  “Why not? I mean, I would expect the humans to have a power vacuum. My dad would tell me stories of the old North American Pack Council and the politics that went on. Why wouldn’t the humans do the same?”

  Michael maintained his pace, allowing the young woman to keep talking as
a way to, hopefully, work through her grief. Perhaps, she just needed to hear her own voice.

  “Well? Would they?” she pressed.

  Apparently she needed more interaction.

  “Jacqueline, you are my charge until such a time that you are capable of standing on your own two feet. In order to make decisions and answer questions, I will provide the information you need.”

  “Information from before the apocalypse? That would be nice. My dad only provided old Pack and UnknownWorld information. He was pretty sparse with the old history.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Michael asked.

  “He says the old world had its own problems, and we wouldn’t benefit from trying to romanticize it. So, he wouldn’t provide too much. Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she went on as they crossed a street, “he told me some of the big stuff.”

  Michael stopped and looked around his frustration coming out in his voice, “Finding this address is a little harder than I figured with so many of the signs missing.”

  Jacqueline looked around, “What’s the address?” Michael told her. “Ok, be right back.” She started jogging down a side street, but called back over her shoulder, “Find somewhere to hide!”

  Michael turned back and walked towards an old building entrance that had an overhang and stepped into the small sheltered area. He leaned up against the side wall, his hands in his pockets, watching the woman run. She jogged four blocks before slowing down to hail a couple of people that had been walking the other direction. After a moment, they pointed back towards Michael’s direction and then the guy on the right jerked his hand to his left.

  Jacqueline was soon jogging back in his direction and Michael watched the couple behind her. The woman made some comment to the man, and he shook his head in the negative. The woman pointed emphatically at the woman jogging away. The man seemed indecisive, so Michael stepped out of the little niche and started walking towards Jacqueline who smiled at him.

  The woman behind Jacqueline grabbed the man’s arm and turned him, both started walking quickly away.

  Moment’s later, Jacqueline jogged up, noticing Michael’s eyes watching behind her. “Yeah, I know, they were arguing if they should have tried harder to hit on me.”

  “Hit you?” Michael asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “No! Hit on me, you know ... see if I was interested in sex,” she told him as she turned around to watch the couple turn a corner. “Well, I guess taking you to a party is out of the question. I’ll never get anyone interested in me.”

  “Indeed,” Michael answered.

  —

  “Oh my God, the stench!” Jacqueline murmured after Michael opened the locked door going down into the warehouse’s basement.

  “Come along, and hold the light steady,” Michael told her, “Fire isn’t the friendliest way to light things. I find it hard to believe how far the world has fallen.”

  “They have electricity up above, why not down here?” she asked as the two descended the stairs. Michael was the first to see the dead man.

  “They did,” he answered, pointing to a corner, “they have a power cord running to that device.”

  “Oh,” she was quiet as she saw the dead husk laying on the table.

  Michael walked over, “Please bring the light.”

  “One second,” she told him. Michael turned to see why she wasn’t immediately obeying and saw she was lighting a lamp on the wall, one that lit the room well. He turned back to the youth and considered where they had stuck the needles into his body.

  Jacqueline’s voice was a whisper, “This is the way they take the blood?” she asked. She gently reached out and moved a bit of the dead youth’s hair, “What did he ever do to them?”

  “Nothing,” Michael answered, “they took his blood to sell it. Perhaps keeping him alive as they took more and more. Eventually, the nanocytes were insufficient, or they didn’t feed him well enough, and he died.” Michael paused and finished, “They weren’t doing it very well.”

  Jacqueline’s voice raised an octave, aghast at his comment, “You are complaining they are doing a bad job of it?” she looked from his face to the youth and back again.

  “Shhh, Jacqueline,” Michael commanded. “Seek to understand before you need salt to go with your foot.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, realizing the man was trying to teach her, but she didn’t understand his English at all.

  “The whole phrase is ‘put your foot in your mouth,'” he replied. “It means to say something that gets you in trouble. Usually, because you didn’t think carefully before you spoke it.” He paused before adding, “Or doing something. It isn’t always speaking,” he amended.

  Michael went to study the device. Jacqueline jumped when a CRASH occurred, and she saw Michael, his elbow smashed into the device and then pulled out. Now he was casually pulling apart the device to see inside.

  “Why doesn’t your jacket show damage?” she asked him.

  Michael answered, most of his attention on the inside of the machine which he had turned to catch the light better. “It has some unique polymers and frankly, other technical stuff I don’t understand, sewn into it that makes it very tough.”

  “Polymers?” She asked, looking around the room. Anything to help her to ignore the dead body.

  “Describes the molecular structure of the materials. Usually synthetic plastics and resins,” he muttered.

  “Technology!”

  Her voice had a life Michael hadn’t noticed yet, so he pulled his head out of the machine to look at her. “Yes?”

  She was animated, at least more than usual. “The past, technology, the power to do so much! That was what my group and I had come into the Fallen Lands to find. If we can figure out the secrets to some of the technology, we could start it up again.” Jacqueline walked to him, “If someone could turn on a town again, it would instantly become somewhere people would want to be. Something good again.”

  He raised an eyebrow when he looked at her, “How are you protecting it?” he asked.

  Jacqueline stared at him a moment. Michael’s return stare wasn’t judging, just patient.

  She finally spoke, a frown on her face. “I guess I’m still a little naive, even after everything I’ve gone through.” She turned to her left, pulled out a small chair and wiped the dust off of it before sitting down. “I promised my father I’d do him proud, and the first chance I hear of technology, I want to go chasing the rainbow again.”

  Michael considered pushing happy thoughts out, but if he did that the two of them would get hooked. Her to the feelings like a drug covering her pain, and him for the same reason.

  It would mean he didn’t have to deal with helping her through this problem.

  “Jacqueline,” he called out to get her attention. She turned her head to him, “We are who we are, you, me, everyone.” He pointed out to the city around them. “Good, bad, selfish, giving, powerful, weak, loving, hateful, it doesn’t matter. Just because you have decided on a new course, doesn’t mean that new course is without challenges.”

  He stepped around the table to stand near her, leaning against another table with his arms crossed. “There were jets, large planes during my time. Do you have them here?”

  She shook her head, “We have large blimps, using lighter than air gasses and anti-gravity for lift and propulsion. But, I’ve read enough to know what jets were.”

  Michael returned her stare for a moment, wondering why it seemed for every step this present Earth moved forward, they took two … or, it seemed, twenty steps back?

  “Ok,” he continued, “so these jets were very automated. They could fly across this land and all the pilots did was to enter information in the auto-pilot where they wanted it to land. The pilots were there to confirm everything was working as it needed to be and they actually had to land some of the older planes. Now, the interesting aspect is that those planes were rarely on course.”

  “Wait, how can that be?�
�� she asked. “If they aren’t on course, they wouldn’t land, and obviously they did, or no one would have flown that way.”

  “They were off course because of winds, the planet rotating underneath it, occasionally due to storms they needed to fly around. What I am pointing out is they always adjusted throughout the whole trip. So while they were never exactly on course, they were close, and always self-correcting, and eventually you would get close enough to see the airport, and fly it in.”

  “So, you are telling me my path, my course, is always going to be self-correcting?” she asked, chewing on her lip.