by Evan Currie
A distant-sounding report echoed in Masters’s ears as he struggled to stay conscious. He felt the weight on his chest shift, and then the demon thing spun around as more reports sounded.
The weight on his chest vanished suddenly, the creature’s body no longer on top of him, and Masters sucked in air as he struggled to sit up and look around. Fighting off a wave of dizziness, he couldn’t see his opponent anywhere. She, it, had disappeared.
Across the room, on the far catwalk, however, he recognized a few faces as Keyz, Hayes, and Turner raced forward with their guns blazing…led by none other than Captain Judith Andrews.
Huh. He slumped back down, black spots playing in front of his vision. I may owe her an apology.
CHAPTER 17
Judith Andrews had to physically fight to keep herself from gagging. The smell of decomposition in the large room wasn’t strong, precisely, but it was pervasive. They’d come down through the roof access, where the catwalk led out to permit workers access to fuel-storage tanks, only to find a scene out of a damned zombie movie.
That wasn’t a huge shock by now, of course, but the scene on top of the generator enclosures had taken her by surprise. For all that she didn’t much like Lieutenant Commander Masters, she knew the man’s record. He was a fully trained SEAL who had gone into this engagement armed to the teeth with heavy weapons and at least some sort of a plan. She wouldn’t have been shocked if he had been dragged under by force of numbers, but seeing him laid out on his back by one opponent who appeared not only literally disarmed but, quite frankly, dead in more ways than one…well, that was a bit of a shocker.
That surprise didn’t stop her from giving the order to open up on the unknown attacker, and the team put multiple heavy 7.62-millimeter rounds into it. The next surprise was when the creature spun on them, snarling. She could have sworn that the bone of its skull…wobbled. It was vaguely nauseating, and that was something she didn’t need considering the smell that permeated the room.
When it moved, though, she lost the capacity to be surprised. She hoped.
It just blurred and vanished from sight, like nothing she’d ever seen before, and then she was staring at the commander’s recumbent body on top of the generator enclosure.
Thinking rationally in the midst of a crisis was one of the first things she’d been trained in, however, and now that the immediate threat to her team leader was gone, she turned to the SEALs who were with her.
“Make a kill box!” she ordered, waving Hayes and Turner forward as she and Keyz set up where they were. “Cover our people down there!”
It was a slaughter — there was no other way to describe it really. These things, people, whatever they were, didn’t stand a chance. From their position, Andrews and her people had the high ground, and in her experience there was no defense against a bullet in the head.
It was over soon, and she found herself looking across the catwalk rail at Masters, who was just getting to his feet.
“Are you all right?” she called across to him.
“I’ve been better,” he replied, getting to one knee and rubbing his chest.
“How the hell did you get over there anyway?”
“I jumped,” he said sourly, stumbling to his feet and making his way to the kukri blade.
Andrews looked over at Keyz, and mouthed the words, “Did he say ‘jumped’?” Keyz just shrugged, eyes wide as he looked at the gap between the catwalk and the enclosures.
Masters slid the kukri blade into his belt, rubbing his face as he turned back in her direction. “What happened to the bitch that was standing over me?”
Andrews shook her head. “No idea. She just vanished. That was a she, right?”
“Used to be anyway,” Masters said. “Damn it! We’ve got to track that thing down.…Killing it is the only way we can stop this madness.”
At the sound of footsteps, Andrews turned, catching sight of the civilian consultant, who was limping in their direction. He looked quite a bit worse for wear, she noted, though between the two, the commander had to win the prize for the bloodiest mess of a face.
“She’ll be going back to her grave,” Norton said, painfully clutching his side as he approached, “and that’s a problem for us.”
“How’s that?” Masters asked, looking around. “Not that many graveyards in this burg…and how the hell am I going to get off this thing anyway?”
“She’s not from here, Hawk,” Norton growled. “She’s Eastern European. I told you that’s where this breed comes from.”
“She’s going back to Europe?” Masters asked, incredulous. “Are you serious? What, do these things turn into bats and fly cross-continental? ’Cause I’m telling you, I know that TSA agents suck balls, but even they’d probably notice a walking corpse with half its skull blown off.”
Norton snorted painfully. “I’d take that bet, but no, that’s not what I meant. She must have been shipped here with dirt from her grave — it’s the only way these things can survive. Not dirt from their homeland or any of that bullshit — dirt from their grave. The dirt they were buried in when they first died, specifically.”
“Who the fuck ships a vampire, in its grave, from Europe to Alaska?!” Masters demanded, throwing his hands up in the air. It was an act he seemed to regret shortly thereafter, as he grimaced and clutched at his chest again.
“Let’s just say that that’s a question I simply must have answered,” Norton said. “To get that answer though, we need to figure out where the hell she went to. I’m sort of hoping one of you guys has an answer, cause I’m at a loss.”
Masters sighed and sat down on the enclosure, legs hanging over the side. “Yeah. I may have an idea on that. First, though…”
He looked down. “Does anyone see a friggin’ ladder? I am not trying to jump back across from here!”
* * *
“Oh, holy shit.”
Masters thought that he probably would have said it a bit more colorfully, but he agreed with Robbie’s sentiment. The EOD man was standing next to him as they looked down from the rooftop of the power co-op at the horde of inhumanity that was now surrounding the entire place.
“You think that’s all of them?” Masters asked, watching the mass of bodies press around the building.
“Does it matter?” Norton asked from beside him. “If it’s not all of them, the risen will just go and turn others. If it is all of them, well…same thing, really.”
The group was standing on the rooftop, taking a few moments to work out their next move. The SEALs and their Asatru backups were all running lean on munitions by this point, assuming they had any left. Only Andrews and her splinter team had more than the rounds in their weapons, and even they were down to less than half of what they’d brought with them.
Norton let out a long breath, the chill air turning it to fog in front of his face. “It might be a moot point now, but what’s your plan for finding that bitch anyway?”
Masters shrugged. “Anything that got shipped here would have come in through the airport. That means there would be some record of the flight and the cargo.”
“Even for private planes?” Norton asked.
“Yes and no. There would be a record of the flight, if nothing else,” Masters said. “And if we can figure out what flight brought this bitch to Alaska, it might give us a shot at finding her grave.”
“I hope you’re right, but what about these things?” Norton asked, nodding out over the sea of corpses.
Masters looked past them, to the town beyond. He was mentally counting the numbers, trying to figure out how many bodies were there and how many people supposedly lived in Barrow. The numbers weren’t good.
“Robbie,” he said after a moment, sighing. “Go below and shut this place down. Captain, call up the Coastie bird. We’re going to need a lift.”
Robbie Keyz flipped a quick salute and disappeared below, not bothering to say anything as he did.
Judith nodded, stepping aside from the group to radio the chopper with
out complaining or commenting about him giving her orders.
Masters turned to look at the two Asatru and Hannah. “Your help has been invaluable, but you don’t need to come with us. It’s not your job.”
“You must be joking,” Hannah said, deadpan. “These filth invade our territory and kill our neighbors and friends, and you think we will let that pass? You, Commander, do not understand either the Asatru or the Rokkatru. If you want us out, you will have to fight us for it.”
The two soldiers behind her chuckled darkly, both of them grinning at her proclamation.
“Fine.” Masters rolled his eyes. “I’m not in a position to turn down competent help right now anyway.”
Any further conversation was interrupted when the low background drone of the generators fell silent, and the lights around the town blinked out of existence.
“Chopper’s inbound,” Judith said in the darkness.
“Flash infrared,” Masters ordered. “Mark out the LZ.”
They got to work, trying to ignore the groaning sound of the creatures that surrounded them, audible now because of the silenced machinery.
* * *
The local time was well after midnight by now, and with all the lights in town knocked out, there wasn’t even the twilight glow of the sun over the horizon. It was as dark as any of the people in the chopper had experienced, the only glow coming from the soft red glow of the instruments and the occasional twinkle below from what had to be emergency batteries or maybe personal generators.
If people were running the generators, Masters wished them all the luck in the world, because they would likely need it. Attracting attention like that in the current mess was suicidal.
“Captain!” the pilot called over his shoulder. “The admiral’s on the line.”
Judith grimaced, but nodded and pulled on a helmet. Masters watched her lips move urgently, knowing that whatever she was telling the admiral was going to sound completely nuts, and not envying her job at all.
So when she tapped his shoulder and told him to put on the ears, it would be an understatement to say he wasn’t pleased.
Masters sighed, pulling on a helmet of his own. “Hawk.”
“What in the ever-living hell is going on up there?” Admiral Karson’s voice brooked no smart-ass replies this time. Masters knew that he might have leverage with the admiral, but there were times to pull on the lever and times to realize that if you did you might just be dropping a rockslide on your own head.
“That, Admiral, would take more time to explain than I have,” he replied. “The short answer is that you should call it a biological attack.”
“Damn it, Masters, I brought you in to solve problems, not make more of them! Andrews says that you’re being attacked by American citizens!” Karson snarled. “Do you have any idea how many laws you’re breaking?”
“None, sir. The dead have no claim to citizenship,” Masters growled. “Look. I know it’s hard to understand over the radio, but the situation is what it is. We have a line on the source of the biological. Give us six more hours, and if we can’t get it locked down by then…well, just don’t send any more men up here to die, sir.”
“You’re not instilling me with confidence, Commander.”
“How do you think I feel up here in the middle of things, Admiral?”
There was a long pause on the line before Karson came back. “For God’s sake…I don’t know how else to put this. Do not kill any American civilians!”
“Admiral, most of them are already dead,” Masters said tiredly. “Hawk out.”
He pulled the helmet off and looked out the open door of the Coast Guard helo, down at the darkness below. He was tired, really tired. The last place he wanted to be was here, in an American town, faced with death the likes of which he’d never confronted before, even in the Middle East.
The pilot spoke up from just ahead of them. “We’re circling the airport now, ma’am. Orders?”
“How’s your fuel?” Judith asked, leaning forward.
“We’ve got time before we’re bingo for fuel, Captain.”
“Touch and go,” Masters spoke up. “You’re our only way out of this nightmare. Don’t spend any time on the ground if you can help it.”
The pilot glanced at Judith, who scowled but nodded in agreement.
“Roger that. We’ll touch you down just outside the main building, then circle until you’re ready for pickup. Be quick about it, though. We have fuel, but it won’t last forever.”
With that in mind, Masters led his team in a surprisingly textbook touch-and-go dismount from the chopper, and they took the airport in under a minute.
“Secure the doors, and kill those emergency lights,” he said as he headed for the administrator’s office. “I’ll get the computer.”
Security locks in an airport were a joke at the best of times, but here they were even more lacking. It took him only a few seconds to pop the lock and make his way over to the computer he was looking for. When the power was switched off, the airport had changed over to backup power, just as he’d been expecting it would. If it hadn’t — well, it would have taken a bit longer to get the intel he needed. As it was, the computer had been left on after its last use, and the password was actually stuck to the screen with a Post-it. He hadn’t been counting on that; Masters knew his way around most common security systems, and he’d been confident that he could get into this one, but he was happy to take the easy route.
“Anything?” Norton asked, making his way inside.
“Just a second. I’m checking the records now,” he said, tapping in a few quick searches. “All right. Normal flights check out, nothing unusual. Food, medical, and so on.”
“What about the medical flights?” Norton asked. “Sounds like a good way to ship a body.”
“Nothing recent,” Masters said. “A few caskets going out, that’s it. On to special flights…” He whistled. “Your Asatru buddies got a few things flagged here.”
“Oh yeah? Any caskets?” Norton asked, stepping over to lean on the desk and look for himself.
“No, small arms, axes, swords.” Masters snorted. “The swords were what raised a few eyebrows.”
Norton grinned. “Imagine that.”
“All right, that leaves the oil companies,” Masters said. “Lots of flights from them, mostly transport — people from what I can tell. Nothing logged in here looks strange, except…”
“Except?” Norton prodded.
“There’s a Gulfstream parked out in a hangar that came in a few days ago and skipped past the inspection team here. Nothing too unusual about that, but they did note that a truck pulled in and left a while later with a covered bed,” Masters said. “Could be our vampire.”
“Why in the hell would an oil company import a vampire, Hawk?” Norton looked genuinely confused. “It isn’t exactly good for business, you know?”
“Right now, I’m less concerned with the why than the where,” Masters mumbled, shaking his head. “There’s no extra info in here, just that it’s a Benthic Petrol plane. A British company is leasing the rights here.”
“Well then, I’d say that we check their rigs first, wouldn’t you?”
Masters nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got a target.”
The two left the office, heading out into the airport proper. Masters nodded at Judith as he approached. “We’ve got a target; call in the bird.”
* * *
Southwest of town, the fires of hell were burning.
Masters didn’t know what had lit off the wells, but he expected the news services would have a field day once this was exposed. The entire mission was turning into a nightmare, in more ways than one. Even tabling the fact that monsters were stalking the night around here, the aftermath was certain to be brutal.
“That’s the BP site, right there!” the pilot called back over his shoulder.
“You sure?” Judith asked, cocking her head to look out.
“Positive! Made more than one fligh
t through here this year already. First time I had to dodge smoke plumes, though.”
Judith nodded, leaning back as she looked over at Masters. “I hope you have a plan.”
He was staring down at the site, where flames were erupting from the ground like a godly blowtorch.…It wasn’t exactly making him feel great about the situation. They needed a good firefighting team up here, though he’d put money on it that Keyz would be able to put those out in a pinch. Either way, he wasn’t about to call in for civilians or send Keyz off to play with high explosives until he knew the area was secure.
“Course I do,” he said before glancing over at Norton, whose gaze was fixed on the flames too. “We have a plan, right?”
Norton shot him a mild glare, then sighed and shook his head.
“Crap.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Norton said. “You don’t know what we’re dealing with, Hawk. Vampires, they’re something different. They’re not like most things you’ve seen, not even on our side of the veil. The old ones are rare and damned near unstoppable.”
“Nothing’s unstoppable, Alex,” Masters told him grimly.
“Death rejects these people, Hal. These people have done things so hideous that they’ve managed to change the very nature of the universe,” Alex said. “That just doesn’t happen. Death doesn’t just reject people, Hawk.”
“Alex.” Masters shook his head. “You know as well as I do that what happens beyond the veil doesn’t obey natural laws.”
“That’s bullshit,” Alex said vehemently. “Everything obeys natural laws.”
“I’ve seen you tell gravity to piss off, Alex!” Masters growled. “Don’t give me that. Hell, we’ve got a damned ice witch in the chopper with us. How is that any different?”
Alex just glared at him. “There’s a world of difference between playing the game and breaking the rules, Hawk.”
“In my book, all that means is that we don’t understand all the rules yet.” Masters shrugged. “These things have been destroyed in the past, right?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding. “Yeah, they have. Supposedly.”