by M. Lorrox
Eddy glances at Skip and takes a deep breath. “I’ll stay with her.”
Skip nods and looks away.
July still wears her hospital gown, and as Eddy follows her through the hall, he tries very hard not to stare at the opening along the back that shows her skin and underwear. As they pass a room, July pauses, then turns to Eddy. “This one’s empty, come on.”
Eddy furrows his brow and follows her through the door. “Uh…so what’s up?”
She stops and turns to face him. “I need your help, and before you say anything, listen to what I have to say. I need to go on that mission, and I’m not taking no for an answer. I don’t care what it takes; I’m going. I’ll hitchhike if I have to, steal a car, make someone fly me in a plane, whatever the hell I have to do, I will do it. I don’t care if you or Charlie or Sadie say no, or my dad. This is something that is happening. You can help me, or you can try to stop me.” She takes a step toward him, her eyes wide and wild. “But you can’t stop me. I’m stronger than you, Eddy. I’m stronger than them all.”
Eddy swallows. Goddamn it, July!
“So, you’ll help me?
Ugh. “Hold on a sec and let me think about this.”
She folds her arms across her chest. She still holds the long tactical dagger in her hand.
If I don’t help her, she’ll do something crazy. She must have just been acting back in the room… And I have a Mandate by Blood from the prime minister to protect her… Shit. Well, if she succeeds, we can join the mission, if she fails, we’ll just return here…
“I’m waiting.”
What’s the worst that can happen? Dad leaves us in Hawaii? That’s not so bad… He drops his head. “I’ll help. Tell me what to do.”
“Pack a bag and be quick about it. Meet me under the ER awning in five minutes.”
Eddy is there in four with Ukigumo strapped to his leather satchel alongside his bowie, Sophia. He scans the area and feels a moment of panic when he doesn’t see July. If I lose her, it’s all over. I failed once, I cannot fail again!
“Hey. Follow me.”
Eddy turns to see July walking past. Huh? “Don’t you need clothes? Or…anything?”
She shakes her head. “I had to grab something my dad has been holding onto for me.”
Oookay. He hurries to catch up to her—she’s leading him toward the piles of gear and the tour bus. “What’s your plan?”
She spots Deina hauling gear, and she beelines for her. “Not sure yet.”
Deina looks up. There’s that sick girl, and is that the colonel’s and prime minister’s kid? Now what? “What are you two doing?”
July picks up a very heavy case of blood and medical supplies like it was nothing. “Helping. Where’s this go?”
Deina raises an eyebrow. “Under the bus with the rest.”
Eddy grabs another medical case and strains a bit as he lifts it. Sheesh! Hers must be lighter; this one must have all the blood.
In short order, they have everything loaded. July walks to the bus’s door and knocks on the glass.
Zack looks down at her and is taken aback. What in the world happened to you? He opens the door. “Yes?”
She steps in. “We’re loaded up, probably ready to go in a sec.”
Deina scrambles to the bus’s door and hollers after July, “Hold on, you’re not going, are you?” Is she? Is the Costanzas’ son going on the mission after all?
Eddy sneaks past Deina. “I’ve got orders.” Don’t ask questions… Or do, either would work!
Deina shrugs, heads back outside to close the under-bus cargo doors, then climbs aboard. She pauses next to Zack. “To the airport.”
He tilts his head. “One more question. Which one?”
“Oh. Reagan.”
“Okay, another question. Where am I supposed to go, exactly?”
Deina walks to the front of the bus, then points out the windshield. “Pull up to those soldiers. They’re probably waiting for us.”
The soldiers are waiting for them. After a few words with Deina, they open the gate, and a jeep pulls up in front of the bus. As Zack drives past the guards, they salute him. Do I salute back? Better just nod and drive.
The Jeep escorts the tour bus onto the tarmac. They drive around the airport, then far off to one side where another military truck is parked next to a waiting 747 with the recognizable hump immediately behind the cockpit. Staged on the ground is more gear in crates marked with painted stencils.
Zack parks. This is the coolest gig! He opens the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Deina sighs. “I’ll get the doors to the cargo area.”
“Oh… Okay, sorry.”
While she opens the doors, a pair of soldiers exit the plane and walk down the ladder truck parked beside it. When they reach the bottom, they jog over. “Hey!”
“I’m with the mission crew.” Deina grabs a box of supplies and sets it on the ground alongside the stockpiled weapons.
July and Eddy step out of the bus, and while Eddy takes another sip of blood, July studies the pair of soldiers headed for Deina.
The female soldier is tall, with short, dirty-blonde hair sticking out of the edges of a patrol cap, and green—non-vampire—eyes. She stops in front of Deina. “Major Stephanie Dubois.” She motions to the blond-haired, blue-eyed soldier standing beside her. “My assistant, Second Lieutenant Owen Metcalf. General William Campbell personally requested…” She catches a glimpse of July and Eddy out the corner of her eye, and she turns to them. “Hold on—”
“Don’t mind them.” Deina sets a heavy crate on the ground. “They’re just here to help.”
Owen squints at July while she’s not looking at him. Those are some crazy eyes, all right.
Stephanie shrugs. “Well, this is the plane the general arranged for the mission. Our orders are to store everything in the aisles, not the cargo bay. It all goes up there, and some of it took four of us to—”
July and Eddy team lift a large crate that’s marked GRENADES.
Stephanie swallows. “I see.”
Deina smiles. “Some of our gear is heavy too. Whatever you two have trouble with, we’ll get.”
When Deina steps off the ladder truck for the last time, she scans the tarmac and verifies that all the gear has been loaded. She starts to close the bus’s cargo area doors, and both Eddy and July walk over to her.
Deina latches the last door, then turns to face them. “Alright, you two, we’re done here.”
July shakes her head. “We’re to see the team off. These scars on me? Melgaard made them. I’m going to wish Charlie and the others luck in killing him.”
Deina gulps. Dr. Melgaard did that to you? You must be important…somehow. She furrows her brow. “How will you get back?”
“The same way they get here.” July motions over her shoulder to a frozen-stiff Eddy. “He’s supposed to watch out for me.”
Deina eyes him. “Is that true?”
Eddy swallows. …Kinda? “Uh, yes…”
Deina sighs with a shrug. “Very well. You better get back on board the plane, there’s no shade out here.”
July nods and walks away, and Eddy follows.
On the bus, Deina watches them climb the ladder truck. When they disappear into the plane, she nods. She sits down in the front seat and finds Zack’s inquisitive eyes in the bus’s large mirror. “Alright, let’s go.”
After the knights say their goodbyes at the hospital, Sadie, the interim prime minister, sends them off with one final word. “Succeed.”
Charlie nods, then he scoots beside her and kisses her one more time.
After, she raises an eyebrow at him.
“Haven’t you heard it’s good luck to kiss the prime minister before a mission?”
She laughs. “That’s a new one. I love
you, Carles.”
“And I love you, Sarra.”
Charlie leads his team outside to a waiting, plain white commuter bus.
The ride takes nearly a half hour. All the knights have been on dangerous missions before, but they’re still nervous. Ghost and Naga sit beside each other and meditate with their eyes closed. Balena and Ricochet talk about guns, Gabriel and Hecate talk about philosophy, and Charlie bites his tongue. I hope to come back from this one. He glances out the window, and a funeral home catches his eye. Oh, c’mon…
At the airport, they’re met by the soldiers at a gate, then they’re escorted right up to the 747 already loaded with their equipment. On board, they have plenty of room to stretch out, even with the back rows inaccessible due to the aisles being filled with their gear.
While the team gets settled, a pair of soldiers Charlie hasn’t met—a man and a woman—approach him and salute.
“At ease.”
Stephanie takes a sharp breath. “My name is Major Stephanie Dubois, and I’m an electrical and mechanical engineer. General Campbell has put me under your command, sir.” She motions to her assistant. “And this is a member of my team, Second Lieutenant Owen Metcalf.”
Owen smiles. “Hello, Colonel.”
Charlie points at Stephanie with his chin. “I asked for someone familiar with the tech we might face. What’s your experience there?”
“Sir, my team triangulated and destroyed most of the EMP devices that were deployed in and around DC yesterday. We were put on that job because we were the best for it, sir.”
Charlie steps in front of Owen. “Are you an electro-mechanical engineer too?”
He shakes his head. “My specialty is in microcontrollers, FPGAs, and prototyping, sir.”
Charlie frowns. I bet Eddy would know what those words mean. He shrugs. “Glad to have you. I’ll introduce you to the team when we’re in the air. Are you two all set?”
“We are, sir.”
“Good. Now help me find the minibar on this thing. I’ve been dying for a drink for like, two days...and they’ve been two of the worst days of… Well, the worst two days in a long, long time.”
Lars paces his lab while he waits for his most recent set of test results. He passes by the workstations of his technicians as they hunt for vulnerabilities in the different zombie viral strains, mutate them further, and test them all against the unique samples he brought along from “Donor X1.”
What he’s most interested in right now—and has been since first seeing Candace’s initial research on the mysterious sample—is discovering how exactly a vampire’s body was able to control and maintain the zombie virus.
The first tests he ran back at his lab below the Pentagon were to identify exactly what strain the zombie virus was. The genetic sequencing revealed that it was a very common strain, the beta strain. Then, just to verify his assumptions, he sequenced the virus that caused vampirism in the individual. When he determined the subject had indeed contracted the only known vampirism virus, he knew that the secret must be deeper—and harder—to discover. Now, in his lab, he’s sequencing the donor’s DNA and RNA, and is studying the proteins present in the various samples.
-bzzzzzz-
He checks the notification on his phone, and some tests are completed. He hurries back to his office.
When he looks at the results on the monitor, he yells a curse, “Jävla fan!” The answer is here, somewhere...
-bzzzzzz-
He checks his phone again. This time he has a message from SeCComm, the facility’s security, command, and communications group.
@Melgaard, @Kazumi, new intelligence received. All department heads report to Briefing Room 1, immediately.
His frown deepens. “I do not have time for this.”
Hector Reyes, director of SeCComm, arrives in the briefing room. He realizes it’s empty, and he clicks his tongue in disgust. “Where the hell are they?”
When Dr. Lars Melgaard, director of Biologic Research, and Dr. Kazumi Oshiro, director of Cybernetic Research, walk through the door, Hector greets them with scowls. “Goddamn it, what took you two? Sit down and listen up. There’s a group of knights on their way here right now.”
Kazumi throws a scowl at Lars. “It doesn’t look like you covered your tracks well enough.”
He returns a scowl while leaning on the back of a chair. “That is no longer my concern. I need to get back to work.” He pushes off the chair and starts to walk back toward the door.
“Well, now it’s my problem.” -bzzzzzz- “Hold on doc...” Hector checks an update on a tablet, taps a few times, then sets it down in front of him. A map of the area with a green dot centered at their location shows. Red lines radiate outward, and each wedge is broken into sections of different widths. “Before you disappear back into your lab, do you have any updates on your timeline?”
Lars opens the door and walks out. “I’ll inform SeCComm when I have an update.”
After he leaves, Kazumi sighs and shakes her head. “I really don’t like that guy.”
Hector laughs. His buzzed gray hair shines in the overhead lights. “He’s the best there is, just like you are... How about you, any updates on your progress?”
Kazumi stands and pushes her chair in. “Still customizing designs, and still on schedule.”
He slides the tablet away from him and pulls out a phone. “Fine. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of the knights.”
Kazumi rolls her eyes as she leaves. “I never worry.”
Lieutenant Colonel Schermer finds Sadie in High Councilor Eliza Leroux’s hospital room. The tension inside is palpable, and instead of entering, she stands beside the door. “Pardon my interruption, but I’ve identified a suitable location to move to. I have the Council Guard performing a security assessment as we speak, and we should be able to move within the hour.”
Sadie looks over to her. “Is it nearby?”
She nods. “I don’t want to give out too many details until we’re making the move.”
“I understand, thank you.”
Schermer leaves and shuts the door behind her.
Sadie checks the time on her phone as she turns back to Eliza. “Would you mind if we finished this later? I need to speak with a few people before we leave the hospital.”
Eliza sighs dramatically. “Fine, but there’s more I need to tell you before our first official meeting later.”
Sadie sniffs. “Like what?”
She grumbles. “Like the details of our alliances with different governments. For example, we have a particularly interesting relationship with New Zealand and Australia.”
“Hmm, I see. Well, I really must be going now, but I’ll find you before our meeting tonight.”
Eliza dips her head in required respect and clenches her teeth to hide her frown. “I’m at your disposal, Mrs. Prime Minister.”
“You can call me Sadie, but if you want to be formal, I’d prefer just ‘prime minister.’ ‘Madam prime minister,’ if you must.”
“Understood.”
Sadie stands. “I appreciate your help. I’ll reveal the situation to the Council tonight or in the morning, depending on how things progress.”
At that, Eliza is intrigued. “A situation not apparent to the High Council?”
Sadie nods. “Yes, but that must wait.”
Katlyn and Minnie keep Skip company in his hospital room while Rusty sleeps on the chair beside the windows, soaking up the afternoon sun. When Sadie walks in, Minnie jumps off the bed, runs over to her, and leaps into her arms. “Mommy!”
She kisses her daughter’s cheek. “I’ve missed you too, dear. Hello, Skip. Katlyn.”
Katlyn smiles at her while she rubs Skip’s hand.
Skip isn’t smiling. “Have you seen…July or Eddy recently?”
“No, I’ve been in meetings.�
�� She pulls out her phone, checks for messages, and then shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything either. Want me to text them?”
He swallows. “Maybe Eddy. July doesn’t have a phone anymore, not since…” He shakes his head and groans.
Not since Melgaard... Sadie steams, then she writes Eddy a message. “I’m asking him to check in with you. Okay?”
“Thank you.” Skip looks away, staring off at nothing.
Katlyn gives his hand another squeeze, then releases it and stands. “Ma’am?” Her voice cracks.
“Yes?” Sadie sends the message and looks up into her eyes.
“If you need any help with Minnie, please let me know. I’d be happy to babysit or arrange playdates with others.”
Sadie smiles. “I’m sure I’ll be taking you up on that offer. We’ll be relocating soon, and I have a lot of meetings on my plate tonight and over the next couple of days.”
Leaving? Skip glances at the sheets covering his leg. He’s had surgery on the open fracture of his femur, and his wounds have been stitched closed, but his leg isn’t in a cast yet, and he’s not supposed to move. “What about me? I guess I have to stay here?”
Katlyn turns to him, and they share a sad moment.
“I have to put you down, dear.” Sadie sets Minnie on the ground, then stands back up with a smile. “I think we can arrange something for you, Skip. You’re still rolling with me, and I just got a big promotion.” She gives him a soft smile. “Try to relax… Katlyn?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Please call me Sadie, and can I please ask you to continue watching Minnie?”
“Of course.”
Minnie hugs onto her mom’s legs and closes her eyes. “No!”
Sadie pets her daughter’s hair. “Thank you, Katlyn, and there’s something you should know. I’d never, ever send someone outside my family to take her. Meaning, you stay with her like your life depends on it until I return for her.”