Shatterbones

by Robert Brown

  “I see them!” Lloyd yells “They’re with the president’s son.”

  “President Thomas’ son?”

  “No, President Foster. I met his son, Adam, in Washington after my dad was elected. Everyone thought he died with the president on the first day of The Shattering.” Pressing the button on his own helmet, “Visual identification confirmed. Rafael, Amanda, and new enemy leader all at the battle in D.C. It is President Foster’s son, Adam.”

  One long tone sounds in their helmets signifying receipt of confirmation, and now they must fight and wait.

  Having no opposing army of runners to battle, Adam releases control over his ground troops in order to focus all of his energy in attempting to once again gain power over the minds of The Angel’s incoming fliers and the humans or mutants flying the jets. The physical reaction from his mental ripple is still noticeable, even though he and his troops are flying erratically to avoid the incoming spray of bullets from the machine guns on the aircraft.

  “I can’t get into their minds!” he yells out in frustration and fear. “I don’t know what’s happening. She must have brought her most powerful soldiers! Amanda, try to read their minds.”

  Released from their mental subjugation by Adam, the ground troops are free to choose which side they want to be on in this war and begin to fight among themselves. Even in the air, some of the vampires supposedly sided with Adam begin to take flight away from the approaching soldiers before he regains dominance over their minds and brings them in line to battle on his behalf.

  Amanda searches for a way into the minds of The Angel’s vampires while holding up Rafael. A large piece of shrapnel broke his wing, and they are both waiting for it to heal. “I can’t get into their heads, something is blocking me.”

  The jets circle and fly by the reforming defensive line again, strafing Adam’s warriors and sending missiles at them the entire time. Adam’s fear and mental control are getting huge swathes of his arch-vampires blown out of the sky. They keep trying to disperse to avoid being hit, and Adam keeps pulling them back into formation to block the missile and bullet paths to himself.

  A signal is given for The Angel’s forces to halt their forward progress and wait. They are close enough to begin their assaults, but they are still massively outnumbered even though thousands of the original enemy group are no longer remaining. The enemies, who are now absent, have flown or fallen to the ground with injuries from the bullets and exploding missiles. If they aren’t engaged by ground troops that turned against Adam, those vampires will eventually heal and return to the fight.

  There is still a hesitation on the part of Adam to directly engage his troops with The Angel’s forces. His fear of having to fight The Angel and her army continues to prevent him from sending his soldiers out and away from him to freely battle her. This is a costly mistake that is allowing the circling aircraft to repeatedly attack his bunched-up protectors.

  “Enough!” Adam yells and hundreds of his soldiers split away from the group and fly directly at the oncoming jets. The first several attacks result exactly as all witnessing it imagine they would: the swords of Adam’s warriors bounce off the glass canopies of the jets.

  Adam and his entire force wall begin moving forward to engage The Angel and her hovering group. His massive formation moves in one large block forcing The Angel’s soldiers to form their own defensive wall.

  Another jet flies through on its run, and an explosion then black smoke burst from its side as the vampire attacking that plane is pulled through the engine. The same explosion of gore occurs with the next two jets to fly by signifying the engines are the intended targets to bring the planes down.

  Adams forces continue forward. He still has a six to one advantage over The Angel’s group with twelve thousand of his soldiers remaining, but he is still moving in slowly to maintain the defensive formation in front of him. Even though he has unrivaled psychic power on this battlefield, it is useless against his current foe, and that unnerves him more than he wishes it did. In his experience, psychic power can only be defeated by greater psychic power, yet none of his troops have been taken from him by The Angel’s forces. Her troops must have tremendous blocking capabilities.

  Adam knows the history of The Angel and her tactical abilities have propelled her across the entire U.S. in an amazingly brief time. Adam’s power doesn’t include the ability to read minds, but Amanda was able to share memories from other vampires with him. He was shown battles The Angel had fought in and won. Through those memories, he gained the knowledge of how vampires on both sides have been fighting during the war but watching another’s memory is no substitute for personal experience.

  The last fighting Adam participated in was aboard Air Force One nearly a year ago, and that was against humans. In every encounter he has had since that time, he has used his gifts to make other vampires and humans fight for him.

  The jets continue to make their runs and a few of the aircraft are taken out each time they pass.

  “Captain Black, this is The Angel. You’ve done what you can for us, we’re moving in.”

  “Roger that, Angel. We’ll stay in the area and help if we can.”

  “You picked the wrong day to go to war, Adam,” Cora calls in a taunt “I can see in your cowardly eyes you’ve never been in a real fight before.” Moving slightly ahead of the others, she smiles at Lloyd then turns back to face their objective. “Attack!”

  The call to begin is followed by Cora rushing forward, wings beating in a direct line at the hole through which she can see Adam’s face. The soldiers of his line are directed to group together, and they line up in four tight rows to guard the terrified boy. His fear-filled control over them once again gets his soldiers killed. Even Amanda and Rafael are kept frozen at Adam’s side to ensure he has their fighting experience near him if someone should break through.

  Seconds from impact with the enemy, The Angel changes direction and shoots left, raking her sword across the throats of the unprepared vampires in the line. Lloyd and the others strike in similar fashion and sever many limbs with their abrupt direction changes. The defensive wall breaks up and forces are finally allowed to begin peeling off. They are now being directed in different manners by Rafael and Amanda as well as Adam. The pulling and twisting of Adam’s soldiers helps The Angel’s forces, but they are losing vampires in the fight as well.

  The Angel’s soldiers split into multiple teams and unite into flying boxes. The boxes are formations of twenty-four vampires with four soldiers fighting in each of the six sides of a box. They moved in close to Adam’s defensive wall before forming into boxes to prevent Adam’s vampires from gaining a speeding charge to breach the sides. It is an effective defensive structure that would be more potent if they brought shields, but The Angel’s fighters are still able to kill many of the vampires which surround them.

  Unfortunately, skill is only able to take combatants so far in battle. In this open-air battlefield without any physical obstructions to hide behind or maneuver around, the overwhelming number of soldiers Adam has on his side is winning the fight for him.

  The Angel’s forces are falling one by one. Many of the cubes are collapsing, and her soldiers drained or severely damaged bodies continue plummeting to the Earth.

  Lloyd calls out, “All units push for square sum and Denver spiral.”

  Without being able to read minds or send thoughts because of their helmets, the verbal orders have to be called out. The fortunate aspect is their enemy has no clue what Lloyd meant with his orders. The Angel’s forces begin to ascend in the sky and move together as they continue their fight to survive. They pick up velocity, making it difficult for the attacking forces to swing their swords and remain in line for the fight. Adam, Rafael, and Amanda stop following at ten thousand feet and watch as their soldiers pursue the diminishing numbers they need to kill in order to win this fight.

  The square sum order is achieved at fifteen thousand feet and most of The Angel’s remaining t
roops form one gigantic box formation which stops rising and begins to fall with the force of gravity. The Angel and a small group work separately from the box formation and head directly at Adam in a spiral attack like they used in Denver. They spin with their swords out in front aiming at the group defending the three leaders.

  “I’ve had enough of this!” Amanda yells at Adam. “It must be those stupid helmets they’re wearing. Order your idiots to stop cutting off their heads and grab their helmets instead. Make The Angel and her guards kill each other!”

  Thousands of vampires pursue The Angel’s groups in their speeding drop and nearly as many remain with Adam for his defense. With all attention focused on The Angel, the mutants neglect to watch the aircraft that they believed had ended their engagement earlier. Four jets fire missiles and then fly into the mass of vampires pursuing their allies back to the Earth. Three A-10’s fly through Adam’s group at the same time, the pilots open up their guns seconds before impact. The bullets, jet impacts, and explosions cause thousands more bodies to fall from the sky out Adam’s groups.

  The Angel flies directly at Adam, beheading two of his guards and reaching out to slice him in the stomach as she passes. The fight has reached the leaders and the protective helmets are starting to be pulled from The Angel’s remaining fighters.

  The Angel, Lloyd, Brian and twenty others are fighting furiously in the center of the enemy cluster. They are slashing their way through to get at Adam as well as trying to keep their helmets from being removed. Lloyd watches his own soldiers, who are now being controlled by Adam, as they begin to surround his group in preparation to fight.

  Three beeps ring in their ears. The Angel takes off her digital cap and smiles at the three they came here to fight.

  Amanda screams with the image of approaching death she sees in The Angel’s mind and begins to fly away, but Adam pulls her back with his mind. Slapping her hand on Adam’s head, she yells, “Look at her thoughts, she’s killed us all!”

  Adam is jolted by the image and loses his controlling grasp of the other vampire’s minds but is able to angrily issue a verbal command. “Let’s make her pay.” The entire focus in the seconds they have left is to make The Angel suffer for what she has done.

  “You won’t touch her!”

  Lloyd cuts through the disoriented vampires in front of him and grabs Rafael who still seems dazed in fear from the image of the bomb he received. Lloyd sinks his teeth into his enemy’s neck and drains him. Amanda flies to help Rafael escape from Lloyd’s embrace, but his body is already drained and falling when she reaches the pair. Lloyd stabs his sword through Amanda’s neck and tosses her away and into Cora’s awaiting sword. Adam approaches Lloyd from behind.

  Cora watches Adam advancing on Lloyd while she struggles with Amanda and yells for Lloyd to turn around. Cora sees a bright flash and her vision goes black. A sharp pain is burning through her head, and she has the sensation of falling before her thoughts disappear with her vision.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aftermath

  Virginia

  Wearily opening her eyes, Cora turns her head to see wires and a red tube connected to her arm. She feels exhausted. Every inch of her aches in some form, and the small movements she is making just to lift and turn her head cause deep pain.

  A nurse steps into her line of sight.

  “Where am I, what happened?”

  The nurse just smiles and nods while holding up her index finger.

  “Please, tell me what’s going on.”

  The nurse doesn’t say anything, she only holds up her palm and walks out the door.

  Letting her head rest back on the pillow, she stares at the ceiling tiles above her.

  *

  “Good morning, Cora. The nurse just came and let me know you were awake. Are you feeling all right? Can you speak or do you need to go back to sleep again?”

  Slightly disoriented and looking toward the sound, “Dr. Usachova? How long have I been here? Why wouldn’t the nurse tell me anything?”

  “I’m afraid that wasn’t her choice. Your nurse is no longer able to speak, she had her tongue removed by one of her captors. She was freed from Washington D.C. after your battle. She is getting your parents right now; they are sleeping in one of the rooms on the next floor down.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Cora, you saved her life. She is grateful she has the honor of looking after The Angel.”

  “Can you please tell me what happened? Why am I still alive, wasn’t the bomb supposed to vaporize me? How long have I been here? Where are the others?”

  “Don’t get yourself worked up, I will answer all of your questions. You have been here for three days. The president did use a nuclear bomb, but not in the way he originally intended, and you are alive because your cells can completely regenerate.”

  Robert and Tanya walk into the room and walk up to the bed on each side and hold her hands.

  “Your father and I are so proud of you, Cora. You saved us all. The whole country is talking about it. Your final battle gave us back our lives.”

  Shaking her head and blinking, Cora looks at her parents and smiles but looks at Dr. Usachova with a pleading expression. “I don’t know what happened. Please, I was fighting with Amanda when Adam was grabbing Lloyd, and then I felt a pain in my head. I saw a bright light and everything was gone.”

  Smiling, Dr. Usachova sits next to Cora’s bed. “We discovered something sensitive about your brains after you left with your soldiers. One of the electronic helmets we produced to block the psychic waves malfunctioned in the testing facility. It disabled an arch-vampire that was working there. A small EMP was released when it short circuited and he blacked out.”

  “EMP?”

  “Electromagnetic pulse. The helmets use an electromagnetic shield that keeps psychic waves from penetrating the brain. Normally, the shield is contained, but a helmet was defective, and we discovered we could use the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb to knock out the enemy forces. The higher the psychic ability of the vampire, the greater the impact that would be felt.

  “The president ordered all ground troops to enter the battle thirty minutes after you left. They weren’t happy that you went without them, and I understand a few of the faster soldiers made it to D.C. shortly after the bomb had been detonated high above the atmosphere. A large number of the soldiers you were fighting against had turned hostile to their own group when Adam was knocked out, and when their forces combined with ours, the enemy was totally wiped out.”

  “Even Adam?”

  “Yes. Adam’s body was returned to us along with Amanda’s and Rafael’s. There were a few others that were considered leaders in their organization, but those three were the most powerful, with Adam at the top. One of your ground generals made sure they were all completely drained before they were taken from the battlefield.”

  “What about Lloyd? Adam grabbed him before I blacked out.”

  As is typical with terrible news, the expressions on the faces she knows and trust show the answer before the information is provided.

  “I’m afraid Lloyd didn’t make it. His body was found drained near Adam’s, but we weren’t sure exactly what happened to him until now.

  “Radar showed your group was fighting at ten thousand feet when the bomb detonated in the atmosphere. You and the other arch-vampires had quite a fall after you blacked out. You were found in a ball with your arms, legs, and wings wrapped around yourself on the ground, did you do that before you passed out?”

  “No, I was still fighting Amanda when I blacked out.”

  “It probably doesn’t mean anything, the vampires that picked you up just mentioned how unusual it was. No other body that fell to the ground did that. I need to get back to the president so I’ll leave you alone with your parents.” Gently grabbing her hand, she said, “I’m truly sorry about Lloyd, Cora, I know he meant a lot to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Ni
ne

  Loss and Renewal

  Oregon

  A tall woman stands solemnly on a driveway, staring at the large house up the path. Rain pours around her and thunder cracks overhead as she contemplates her approach. If she wanted, she could read the minds of the people in the house to determine if now was the right time, but she knows no time will ever be right with the pain they have endured.

  Cora closes her eyes and moves herself toward the inevitable pain of the encounter. The cold rain rolls itself down her body as she moves. After knocking on the door, she finally opens her eyes and waits.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. I am here to see Mr. and Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

  The man at the door speaks into his radio announcing the guest. Touching his ear, he tells her, “Please come in, they will be with you shortly.”

  Walking down the hall from the rear of the house, the Cavanaughs fix eyes on Cora before she is able to make it through the entryway. The smiles are bittersweet, the expressions on all sides are torn. Each of the parties is filled with happiness and anguish with the reunion.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I wanted too, I…”

  Evelyn walks up and pulls Cora into a tearful embrace.

  *

  On the patio, Greg, Evelyn and Cora sit together watching the rain drip from the patio roofs edge.

  “I remember springtime being more beautiful,” Cora tells Lloyds parents softly. “I remember everything being more beautiful before the change.”

  Evelyn and Greg just sit silently as Cora begins to cry again.

  “I miss him. I know you miss him as well, but I miss him so much. I keep expecting him to show up again, to just be there by my side. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

  “I won’t pretend it is easy for us that Lloyd is gone, but his father and I had to deal with his loss before. When I thought he was gone the first time, I also lost our baby, it nearly took my will to live. After you found him and sent him to us in the forest, Greg and I decided to cherish every extra moment we were given with him. We chose to hold dear to those times, but we knew there was the greatest possibility that he would be gone soon because of the war.