Infinite Vampire [Book 4]_Antivenom

by M. Lorrox

  Ricochet lands hard, and his leg sends a tremor of pain through him. He spits his toothpick out. Goddamn tech-gizmos... Where the hell’s my gun? He looks around and spots it five feet away from the crashed drone. He grumbles as he limps over, crosses in front of the drone, then bends down to pick up his gun.

  Hector grins and yells, “Now!”

  The operator detonates the anti-personnel explosive on the drone, and the screen flickers to black.

  Eddy and Johannes take aim with their rifles while July bounces back and forth in her stance, the Patton saber floating in her hands. The sun is setting behind the mountain to the west—past the boat and across Bligh Sound. July notices her diminishing shadow dance across a small, yet-untrampled fern and then off it again with each of her motions forward and back. So much noise! Just ignore it and remember the moves. She tightens her grip on the antique sword’s handle.

  One of the drones from the squadron that attacked from the northeast reaches the clearing where the base is set up, but it pauses for a moment.

  Eddy takes advantage of the opportunity and fires a burst of bullets at it. -Brrrittt!- It’s a hard and long shot, and although he tried to account for the distance, he was off, and the first bullet was far below target. The second and third bullets, however, were slightly higher due to the gun’s recoil and Eddy’s inexperience with firing automatic weapons. The third bullet hits its mark. -Boom!- Eddy lowers the rife. “It blew up! Those things have bombs on them too!”

  Johannes shakes his head. “Don’t let any of them get close to base.”

  Eddy raises the gun again. Obviously I’m not going to let them get close to base. “Do you know how many shots per magazine? I forgot to ask.”

  Johannes raises his gun and scans the sky. “Twenty. In burst firing mode, you’ll have seven pulls before needing a reload.”

  Okay, six more bursts. Who wants some?

  Charlie jumps down from the tree, and he meets Hecate near a face-down zombie that lost both its legs and an arm. It tries to get up, but all it can do is lift its head and torso off the ground. Charlie walks around the back of a tree, sets his sword down, and rips a cantaloupe-sized rock from the ground. He stands beside the tree, ten feet from the zombie, and he raises the rock beside his head, ready to throw.

  Hecate takes a few steps back.

  Charlie launches the heavy stone straight toward the zombie’s head, and it hits it on the back of its skullcap. The zombie drops to the ground and stops moving, but it doesn’t blow up. “I think it’s knocked out. I want to take a closer look.”

  Hecate scowls. “Why would you want to take a closer look? Just look from there. It’s a zombie with armor and explosives that detonate when it dies.”

  “Don’t forget the sword-arms.”

  She shakes her head.

  “It’ll just take a second.” He walks over to the zombie’s side, turns his torso away and blocks his face, then he kicks the zombie.

  The zombie doesn’t respond.

  He takes a step, and with his foot, he works the toe of his boot under the zombie, then he pushes it over. It flops onto its back. Its eyes are closed, and dirt is mashed into its broken teeth. Beside Charlie now is the zombie’s remaining arm with the blade attached. He crouches down to look at it. “I don’t like this.”

  Hecate sighs. “Which part?”

  “I guess all of it.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Charlie stands back up. He frowns as he looks at the zombie’s face again, then he notices something behind it. “There’s a gear-track inside there...”

  Hecate steps toward him. “Inside where?”

  Charlie kneels down and grabs a twig. He pokes across the zombie’s face, into the inside of the neck armor, and he taps the stick against the track where a gear would engage. “There.” He looks up at her. “Why would there be gears?”

  With the slight movement, dirt that clung to the camera lens falls off, and Hecate sees the diaphragm auto-adjust down to block out the sudden increase in light. Cameras, gears, bombs, and...CAMERAS! She lunges forward and tackles Charlie away from the zombie just as the explosive at the back of its armor is remotely detonated.

  -BOOM!-

  Hector frowns. “What happened? Did we get one?”

  A voice from the bullpen squeaks, “Not sure, sir.”

  “Well arc section six was disappointing. Release section five, pump them, arm them, and get them into the game.”

  Paul attacks his keyboard. “Yes, sir. That’s us, D-Con one.”

  Charlie shakes the surprise and dust out of his eyes, then he realizes that Hecate is lying on top of him, groaning. “Shit, are you okay?”

  “Ugh... My leg took shrapnel... It hurts like crazy.”

  Charlie looks at the wound and winces. “You’re going to need some surgery... Thanks, and sorry.”

  She sighs. “Let’s get back to base. I’m suddenly getting the feeling that this was a much more coordinated attack than I thought.”

  To the east and north, Stephanie and Balena work together to hold the line. A drone drops into the clearing and spots Stephanie. It accelerates straight toward her, but -Boom!- Balena takes it out.

  Stephanie shudders. “Jesus.” She looks from the sky to the ground. In the clearing are blasted areas where their grenade shells exploded, plenty of zombie blood and gore, and about two dozen corpses. Did that one move? She turns to look at a face-down zombie to her side. It’s motionless, and it looks like it took a direct hit from a grenade. Pieces are torn from it, and dark blood oozes onto the ground.

  She looks over to Balena. “Hey, did either of those guys to the north answer your call?”

  Balena studies the sky and the far tree line, looking for targets. “No. Which can only mean bad.”

  “Shit...” Stephanie sighs, then the face-down zombie at her side dies from its wounds, and its head explodes. -BOOM!-

  Most of the blast is directed down, into the dirt, but some is bounced back up. Stephanie leaps away and to the side, and while she’s airborne, she feels a flash of pain in her leg. She lands hard on the ground, then she checks the back of her thigh. Sure enough, she’s bleeding. “I’m hit!”

  Balena runs over to her and is momentarily relieved to see her holding her leg. “You’ll be alright.”

  Stephanie nods. “Yeah, as long as whatever got me doesn’t infect me.”

  Balena looks over to the headless zombie that just blew up and grimaces. She clenches her teeth for a moment, then she screams into the open sky above the clearing, “FUCK YOU TOO!”

  Stephanie winces as she pulls a small, dark object from the bloody wound. She holds it up to Balena. “Might be okay. Looks like a pebble.”

  “Can you walk? We should regroup.”

  She nods. “Yeah, let’s go. I’ll flank you.”

  Stephanie’s yell, and then Balena’s scream, are both heard at the base, and Johannes is quick to lower his gun. “Leo, you’re a much better shot than me. Take Stephanie’s place on the line.”

  He turns to face Johannes, but the man is already back to scanning the sky for drones. He glances at July. “You’ll stay here?”

  She meets his gaze. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Alright, I’m pushing up.”

  He starts to run forward, and on the way, he sees another drone just hovering behind a tree. When the drone sees Eddy, it takes off at full speed toward him.

  -Brrrittt!- -BOOM!- The blast takes out the top of the tree, and it falls with a rustle and crash. This time, Eddy hit his target with the first bullet in the burst. Maybe I should switch back to single shots... Nah, bullets aren’t the problem—everything else is.

  He spots a zombie coming through the trees ahead, and he raises the rifle and prepares to fire. Remember, they’re not people anymore; they’re zombies... They’re zombies with
swords coming out of their arms, armor on their heads, and explosives...somewhere on them. He takes aim and fires; the bullets rip into the zombie, and its head is replaced with an explosion of blood, bone, brain, and shot pellets.

  Eddy lowers the rifle. I did not need to see that.

  In the middle of the night in Northern Virginia, Rusty sleeps curled up at the foot of the bed with Sadie and Minnie. He kicks his little furry feet while he dreams of being out in the wild, of exploring new foreign territories, of chasing down new, foreign prey.

  In his dream, he’s leaping over brambles and aiming his long canine teeth toward the throat of a large bear-like monster, but suddenly his world flashes bright.

  In the hotel room, he spasms. His heartrate drops precipitously, his breathing slows so much it almost stops, and his dream comes to an end.

  Sadie and Minnie continue their own dreams—both of which happen to be nightmares.

  The zombies from arc section five are broken into two groups, and one arrives in the east, where Balena and Stephanie are positioned. The two women are pulling back, but the thrashing and howling sounds from behind them cause them to pause.

  Balena turns to Stephanie. “Can you climb with your injuries?”

  She shakes her head. “Not well, anyway.” She looks around for a low branch, and she finds a downed tree propped up against another one. “I’ll take cover and provide fire from over there.”

  Balena nods. “Okay, I’ll crossfire from the other side.”

  While Balena runs to one side of the clearing, Stephanie crawls up the trunk of the downed tree. She finds a spot far enough off the ground to protect her from the zombie’s arm blades, and she rests the barrel of her gun on a branch. She smirks. Not quite a bipod, but it’ll work.

  The zombies burst into the clearing, their faces the definition of pain and torture. Stephanie and Balena open up on them from the angles just as Eddy enters the clearing between them. He drops to a knee and adds firepower in the middle.

  In the constant barrage, the zombies drop fast and explode in the distance. Balena empties her magazine, switches to her last fresh one, and switches her rifle to single-shot mode. Twenty shots, that better be enough... She hears the whir of a distant drone and checks the sky. Hmm, must not be nearby. There are more zombies rushing the clearing, so she raises her rifle again.

  Four-hundred feet directly above her, a drone kills its motors and drops. It spins its rear propellers long enough to tip the drone to be faced down—camera first.

  Three-hundred feet.

  Balena is a speck below, but her muzzle flash is easy to see through the drone’s first-person-view camera.

  Two hundred feet.

  The drone drops almost silently, only spinning up its motors at a few percent of their maximum RPMs in order to steer.

  One-hundred feet.

  Balena has fired another eight times, and she doesn’t see any more zombies. She lowers her gun and glances toward Eddy and Stephanie. We did it.

  Five feet above her head, the drone operator in SeCComm reinstates the drone’s auto-level function. The front motors fire, then a split second after, the rear ones. Surprised by the sudden sound, Balena dives to the side.

  The drone operator detonates the bomb. The relatively soft steel pellets arranged in a matrix along the bottom of the explosive deform with the explosion. When they blast downward, each is about the size and shape of one of Ricochet’s .22lr bullets.

  Eddy and Stephanie both jolt with the explosion taking place in the wrong direction, and they only see a flash and smoke where their teammate was. Eddy jumps up. “Balena!”

  There’s no response.

  Damn... Stephanie feels warm and weak. She sighs as she raises her gun and takes aim again at the far side of the clearing where the zombies were. No more come, and a quiet breeze carries a chill. I guess that’s all of them... She starts to climb down. “Leo, go check Balena!”

  Eddy’s head is tipped low, and his shoulders slump as he starts toward where Balena was.

  Stephanie pauses to catch her breath and notices his body language. War must be new to him. Well fuck, it should be; he’s only a kid... “Hurry up! Focus! Stay covered!”

  Eddy glances around to check his surroundings, then he runs the rest of the way to Balena. He finds her crumpled up next to a tree, more than a dozen wounds stretching across the back of her lower body. “Balena?”

  Eddy holds his breath while he waits for a response that doesn’t come. He looks at the wounds she’s suffered. She must have been caught in the edge of it. Her legs have holes peppered in them from her ankles to her hips, while one wound on her lower back oozes blood. She’s breathing!

  He jumps over to her head and checks for a pulse. Pulse is strong! He lifts his head toward Stephanie’s position. “She’s alive!”

  He hears her call back, “Bring her back to base! I’ll cover!”

  Eddy looks down at the elite Navy SEAL and Knight of the Order and wonders what would be the best way to carry her. I guess upside down to limit blood loss... What about her hands though...

  After a minute of positioning a strap across her shoulder and loosely binding her hands together with a piece of her torn pantleg, he lifts her legs onto his shoulders and lifts her torso up with his other hand.

  She’s heavy, but Eddy is a growing vampire; he’s stronger by the minute.

  On the south side of the base, few zombies escape Hecate and Charlie. Even though Gabriel prefers to fight with a ten-foot spear, the many warzones Gabriel graced as a medic required training with rifles, and the M4 serves the tall knight well.

  Toward the edge of a denser area of the forest, Gabriel sets the tip of the rifle’s barrel in the crook of a tree trunk that splits into two near the ground. Low branches provide cover, and the muzzle flashes are blocked by the tree and its canopy.

  So far, drones haven’t been able to spot the shooter.

  At the far end of Gabriel’s sights is a gulley that has been funneling the zombies together. Single bullets fired into the face-hole openings of the zombies’ armor result in head-explosions and dropped zombies. Their corpses litter the area—the sun shining off the shiny steel of their arm blades and armor.

  Movement catches Gabriel’s eye. Let me see your face. Charlie! He’s carrying Hecate; she’s wounded. Gabriel breaks cover and scans the area for any zombies and the sky for any drones.

  Charlie notices the tall knight in the distance. Good, maybe the team is alright. He screams near Hecate’s head, and she winces. “We’re falling back! Provide cover!”

  Owen is breaking down his equipment on the Ghost attack boat when he hears gunfire in the distance. “Fuck.” His eyes dart back to the rear hatch of the boat, where he could stand and add supporting fire, or where he could jump into the water to swim to shore. His eyes flash wide, and instead, he runs in the opposite direction—to the Ghost boat’s cockpit. He begins the start-up procedures so he can use the ship’s weapons system.

  It takes him two whole minutes to bring the systems online, but to him, it seems like it takes hours.

  He gets the M197 electric rotary cannon—the 20mm Gatling gun—up and running and the video targeting system enabled. He aims the gun into the air and fires a quick burst; in the split-second he squeezed the trigger, it fires thirty, huge, explosive rounds.

  The projectiles leave the barrel at over a kilometer a second. After five seconds, their self-destruct activates, and they explode two and a half miles away. Owen aims the cannon over the base and above the shallow valley that extends east.

  When the team hears the cannon firing, they want to cheer. They each hasten their return to base.

  One drone is still active, and in its view, it captures the trail of the burning tracers in the 20mm rounds. Hector was sipping coffee, and he spews it out of his mouth and over the desks below him. “Is that from the
ir boat?” He flips a switch on his desk. “Hold the helicopter, I repeat, do not launch the helicopter!”

  A voice over his headset confirms the order. He sighs.

  Andre clicks a few buttons. “I’m taking over as pilot on attack drone thirteen.” He changes the view, and although the electric cannon is no longer firing, plenty of smoke from the huge cartridges hovers near the gun. “Looks like it, sir.”

  “Damn, that’s serious firepower.” He squints. Nobody is outside operating it. “How many more attack drones are ready?”

  Andre swallows. “This is our last fully prepped, but we have another three almost ready to go. The team could have them in the air in twenty minutes... Maybe fifteen.” He holds his breath, awaiting a response from Hector that he assumes will be wrathful.

  “Fine. Get your team working on deploying the next three. Take this last one in a wide loop, approach the boat on its far side, and take out the gun’s targeting system. Don’t give anybody on shore a shot at the drone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want that gun offline. We can’t send the helicopter until it is.”

  As the team members fall back to the base beside the attack boat, the second group of zombies from the fifth arc section’s container attack from the southeast. At the same time, the last attack drone approaches the boat from the middle of the sound.

  Stephanie is the first to arrive back at base, then Charlie carrying Hecate, then Gabriel. Inside the boat’s cockpit, when Owen sees zombies chasing behind Gabriel on the weapons system’s video feed, he aims and fires an even shorter burst of bullets. Ten high-explosive rounds rip through and explode inside a group of three zombies, whose heads then also explode.

  Charlie props Hecate up on an equipment case facing north, then he spins, shouting orders, “Form a circle! Call out any threats!”

  When the next zombie is about to reach the boundary between the forest and the area around the base, Gabriel calls it out, aims, and fires.