by M. Lorrox
Coatroom. What should I do?
Guard passing again in five minutes. Is there a control room where they monitor security cameras?
I didn’t see one, no.
Qilin bites her lip. She’s prostrate on the ground under an olive tree on the top of the hill. Jambavan lays beside her. She taps him with her finger, then whispers, “Guard station might be in the outbuilding on the far side. Might need a distraction.”
He lifts a pair of binoculars and looks past the villa toward the outbuilding. From his angle, he can only see a corner of it. He whispers back, “I’ll hit it with a flashbang, then help with the trunk. Mustang ready?”
She nods. “Just waiting for the signal. I’ll try and draw some heat from you... You better get moving. Gonna take the beach?”
“On my way.” Jambavan slinks back a few feet, then crouches and descends the other side of the hill until he’s out of sight.
Qilin checks the time. Four minutes... She sends Steve another text.
The power’s gonna go out. Be ready to move. Go get those keys! Wait by the trunk.
Four minutes later, the guard with the German Shepard patrols across the bottom of the hill, and Jambavan is poised beside the outbuilding on the other side of the villa, ready to attack. As soon as the guard and dog pass, Qilin sends both Mustang and Steve a text:
KILL THE POWER!
Mustang holds the phone up for Madeline to see. She nods at him then turns to look into the truck’s side mirror. She watches the telephone pole that she climbed up earlier. She brought a steel cable up with her, and she tied it off and wrapped it over and over itself, just a few feet from the wires and transformer at the top.
The other end of the wire is wrapped around the trailer hitch on Mustang’s truck.
Lorenzo’s villa is in a remote area that backs up to the edge of some military land, and not a single other car has driven the road since Mustang and Madeline first arrived. Mustang starts his truck, pulls forward, and stretches the cable across the dark pavement. He whaps Madeline in the thigh. “Giddy up!”
She laughs. The smile stays on her face while Mustang floors the gas pedal, and the 4x4 truck tears at the pole. The tires spin, then smoke, but the pole stays standing—the truck doesn’t have enough traction because as it pulls, the taught wire extending upward relieves weight from the truck’s rear tires.
Madeline unbuckles and hops out with an axe. Fifteen seconds and five strong swings later, the pole splits and crashes onto the road behind Mustang’s truck.
He slams on the brakes and skids to a halt as a thousand sparks explode from the transformer.
The power at Lorenzo’s estate goes out.
Li Chen left all the lights on in his room, but he’s baked and sleeps sideways on the bed. Now, he sleeps in the dark.
Lorenzo and his guests are naked and sharing a bed, and their intoxication from various aphrodisiacs, hormones, and sedatives keeps their minds in a calm state. Lorenzo left the lights on in the adjoining master bath, but he and his guests don’t notice that they go out.
The guards, though, notice the power outage. Within ten seconds of the blackout, Jambavan pulls the pin on a flashbang grenade, kicks open the door to the outbuilding where he saw guards walking in and out from, and tosses it in. He ducks away and counts to three. -BANG!-
Everyone inside is blinded, and all they can now hear is the ringing in their ears. Jambavan moves through them and tries his best to only incapacitate them, not to kill them. He hits them in the temple, either with his fist or with the batons he wields in each hand, but he’s careful to pull the strikes. He deals with the last of them and smiles, thinking of the knight who trained him, Korina. She’d say something funny now, like ‘Sleep tight’ or something...
He notices light coming from one side of the smoke-filled room, and he checks it out. Monitors on a desk are still powered on, and they show feeds from the cameras around Lorenzo’s Villa. They must have battery backups. On the screens, he sees Qilin darting across the grounds near the hill, the guard with the dog coming back from the beach, and another pair of guards rushing into the mansion. Next to the desk with the monitors is a rack of servers and hard drives. Jambavan pulls a tube of Semtex from a pouch on his thigh and sets it on the rack. He pushes in one of the radio detonators Mustang provided, then glances at the monitors again.
The guard and dog are now running toward the outbuilding.
Jambavan swivels both batons in his hands—the one in his right hand awkwardly because his wrist is in a cast. “Sorry doggy, but your walk is over... I guess that’s not very funny. I might be bad at catch-phrases…”
The distant -BANG!- from the flashbang grenade in the outbuilding startles Lorenzo and his lovers in their suite. Lorenzo jumps out of the bed to get pants. “Non muovere!” With the slacks he wore earlier only half on, he rushes to a table hugging the side wall, focuses while he buttons the tight pants below his belly and zips his fly, then grabs a fabric case from a hiding place underneath the tabletop.
Lorenzo pulls a pistol from the case. Dim moonlight whispers a sheen against the gun’s stainless frame as Lorenzo raises it and pulls back the slide and hammer. He creeps to the window. With a finger, he draws the curtains to the side and peers toward the security outbuilding. Smoke pours from the open door. Merda!
A dark streak catches his attention—a woman cuts across the lawn from the hill toward the house. He squeezes the handle of the pistol and reaches to open the window, but he hears his guests whispering to each other.
He turns to them, and with his empty hand, appeases them with an open palm. “Sarŕ bene, resta qui.” He rushes to the door leading to the third-floor hallway, opens it, and steps out without making a sound. He locks it behind him.
Charlie blasts down the hall lit by red emergency lights and into the stairwell as fast as he can. July is wrapped in a blanket, and he carries her on the shoulder that she bit into. His katana is in his right hand, and the submachine gun bounces at his back as he bounds up the stairs.
Pain saturates his mind from all over his body—the holes from shrapnel in his side, his ripped-up forearms from holding the electric rotary cannon, the cuts across his face from the claws on July’s fingers, the tears down his belly from the claws on her toes, his broken collar bone and cracked shoulder blade from July’s powerful bite, and the massive gash Mary gave him from hip to shoulder. Every step opens his wounds further, and the remnants of his ACU top is now nothing but blood-soaked rags.
His pulse grows weaker, and he breathes harder, but he doesn’t slow until he reaches the door to the top hallway. He opens the door and can hear Mary leaping up the stairs, just one flight behind him. On the other side of the door, he trips and nearly falls over into a sea of zombie corpses with blades extended in all directions. As he stumbles, he cuts his leg open on one blade, but he catches himself and prevents dropping July or falling and impaling himself. He takes a split-second to scan the floor while he takes a breath.
“Sir!” Balena is positioned outside the giant hole in the wall leading to the helipad, and she lowers her gun.
Charlie glances at her long enough to see her and the wrecked helicopters past her, then returns his eyes to the gauntlet of ground he must navigate: squishy, hole filled bodies with hard metal neck and head armor, and blades jutting in all directions. “Fall back! Incoming!”
Balena swallows. He’s running away? Oh, shit! She leans off the wall and starts to limp backward. “I’ll cover you!”
“No! Don’t fire! Fall back!” Charlie is halfway through the short hall to the helipad when Mary comes through the door behind him.
She isn’t surprised by the dangers underfoot; she watched the battle unfold through video feeds from the cameras throughout the facility. “Wise decision! Any gunshots, and I’ll open fire!”
Balena glances at her. “You don’t have a gun...but you HAVE A ROBOT H
AND? WHAT THE FUCK!” She hurries her withdraw toward the busted helicopter.
Charlie reaches the helipad, then he sprints a few steps to one side and sets July down on the ground. He huffs a breath, then he trudges back into line with the door to the hallway.
-Rreeeeee...-
Charlie looks up at the familiar sound—the same panel inset in the concrete slides open. This time, he’s slow to react and doesn’t have a gun handy to fire at it, and when it’s fully opened, a camera and gun turret move to aim at him.
Mary steps out and takes her time while she glances at Charlie, Balena, July, and the helicopter wreckage. She points up to the camera and gun high on the wall behind her. “I won’t fire unless you do.”
Charlie slips the Scorpion EVO 3 submachine gun off his shoulder and tosses it away. He motions over his shoulder. “Balena, hear that? Do not fire on her. We’re in quite the jam here.”
Balena lowers the M4 from her eyes, but she keeps it aimed toward Mary. “I’ll hold my fire...”
The camera and gun turret aims at Balena as Mary places her hands at her hips. “You’ve seen what is possible, Arashi. This is your last chance. Drop your sword, and join me.” She shrugs. “Or fight me if you must, but you will fail.” I’ll take him alive, then I’ll use him as leverage on Sadie. She smiles and shakes her head. “You don’t want to die today.”
Charlie grips his sword with both hands. “You know what I want?”
She snorts. “Of course I do: you want peace. And that’s what I’m ultimately creating, a peaceful world. Humans will never be at peace with one another, and they must be eliminated. There’s no other way our society will survive, let alone our planet.”
“You keep feeding me the same line of bullshit, Mary. I’m not just some device you can control like a robot. I’ve heard enough, and now, I’m going to kill you.”
She points with her cybernetic arm. “Are you going to drop the sword and die like a man or attack an unarmed woman like a coward?”
Balena tosses a thin, Zinner sword across the ground, and it slides toward Mary. “Here ya go.”
Charlie sneers at Mary. “You said you wanted my sword. Prove to me you’re worthy to wield it.”
She grabs the Zinner from the ground with her cybernetic hand and swings the blade in a fast figure-eight in front of her. “Your move, Arashi.”
With all his focus and remaining energy, he attacks. He slices for her neck on the left side. She’ll block with that shitty sword and Ketsueki Seishin will cut right through it!
Mary doesn’t move her feet; she stays firmly planted to the concrete. She pushes her sword across to block, just the way a swordsman would.
He sees her arm moving into position, and the thought of a smile registers in his mind. His face is locked in a grimace as he puts even more strength into his blow.
When the more than one hundred thousand stacked layers of Ketsueki Seishin are only an inch from the cold-rolled and flat-ground steel of the Zinner sword, Mary moves her arm. She was holding the handle of the Zinner sword near her armpit, but she releases her grip and blocks Charlie’s sword with her metallic hand. She catches Ketsueki Seishin between her middle and pointer fingers—between her titanium-alloy fingers. She smiles as she feels the impact’s vibration rattle through the arm and into her right shoulder—and through Charlie’s weakened body.
When he realizes his attack will fail, he pulls the force from the strike, but his momentum crashes his sturdy frame into her.
She doesn’t buckle, but Charlie crumples against her and covers her with his blood. “UGH!”
Mary opens her fingers, then slides them alongside Charlie’s sword until they reach the round, iron handguard. There, she clamps her fingers onto the blade and twists her cybernetic wrist.
Charlie pulled the strike, and his grip is looser than a vise—which is how tight Mary’s fingers squeeze the blade. As she twists, the sword torques in his hands. She lifts her hand up and spins her palm to Charlie, swinging his own katana through the air and slapping him in the side of the face with the flat side of the blade.
The Zinner sword clangs to the ground as Charlie spins his torso away from the lightning-fast blow crunching into his face.
Mary releases the sword’s blade, and in a flash, withdraws her hand a few inches and grips it the way a sword wants to be held—by its handle. She slices it over her head and up to the side of Charlie’s neck, only stopping after cutting into his skin an eighth of an inch.
Charlie wheezes and struggles to stand. His vision is blurry, and he feels an urge to sleep. “What are you waiting for?”
Mary draws the sword back, away from his neck, but she holds it still pointed at him. She sets the ancient steel’s tip at the top of his sternum. “I’m just listening to the sword. I feel it pulling toward your heart.”
He spits in her face. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Flying Eagle volunteered to dispose of Deina’s body, and he walks out of a side door leading from the banquet area of the hotel. He lifts his hand and looks at the keys he holds—Deina’s keys. Hmm. No logo. I think it’s some sort of hatchback... A few, unmarked keys and a five-inch, solid aluminum kubotan hangs from a plain ring. He rubs a finger along the grooves carved into the self-defense tool. I’ll keep this, these are cool... Too big to be hanging from my bike, but it’ll at least always remind me of your treachery, Deina.
He glances around the lawn as he walks toward the parking lot, then he grips his hand on the weapon’s knurls. The keyring hangs from the side of his fist by his thumb, and an inch of aircraft-grade aluminum ends in a spike that juts out from the pinky-side of his fist. He looks up to the parking lot to search for her car.
Instead, he spots a man with binoculars watching him from inside a van. What’s that dude’s problem?
As soon as the man, who pledges allegiance to the People’s Resistance Army and goes by the codename “Blue Sabre,” sees a vampire looking straight at him, he sneers, drops the binoculars, and stomps on the gas. I’ll run your ass over on my way to Hell!
Flying Eagle’s first instinct is to wonder why a man in a van is accelerating toward him, but then he remembers that he’s an officer of the Council Guard, and that in a large, windowed room behind him, the prime minister is holding an emergency meeting with the High Council and a collection of other elders and knights.
As the van’s front tires jump the curb onto the grass that separates the hotel from the parking lot, Flying Eagle is sprinting straight toward the van. He’s fast, and by the time the van’s back tires hit the curb, Flying Eagle has closed the distance and is leaping headfirst at the windshield.
The cab rocks from jumping the curb, but the van’s driver is undeterred. Blue Sabre has one foot on the gas, and the van tries to push past ten miles per hour on the grass. He has one hand on the wheel while the other one holds the detonator—his thumb hovering above the button to set off the bomb.
Flying Eagle crashes—kubotan first—into the windshield. He holds it in front of him in one fist and supports it from the back with the palm of his other hand. Right as he makes contact, he squeezes his eyes closed and tucks his head between his arms, forming himself into a straight-as-an-arrow, aluminum-tipped, vampire-missile.
The keychain’s tip touches the glass, and with all of the Flying-Eagle-missile’s mass and speed, the layers of the windshield crack and a hole the size of a dime blasts through the glass. In that split-second, Flying Eagle is suspended in the air; his fists are squishing into the glass, and the impact ripples through his bones all the way to his boots. The van’s driver snarls as the rear tires toss torn blades of grass into the air.
Before the tires gain good traction on the ground, the windshield collapses inward, first against the back of the steering wheel and then into the driver’s face. Flying Eagle still rockets inward, but that’s about to change.
Blue S
abre pushes the button on the detonator. It completes the circuit with the battery, and it supplies electricity to the wires running to the blasting caps. In the back of the van, 1,000 pounds of explosives and fuel ignite.
The van is thirty feet from the hotel—and if measured through the glass windows on the ground floor—forty feet from the High Council and other vampires.
Flying Eagle is much, much closer, and from the immense sudden pressure, the windshield is blown backward. Within nanoseconds, his momentum is reversed. His muscles are tensed, and his limbs are stiff from his attack. The blast shatters the bones in his arms, shoulders, eight of his vertebrae, and six ribs. The recently pierced and cracked windshield folds backward, smashing against his arms as it acts like a sail and sends him flying backward and upward, straight toward the hotel’s outer wall.
Inside the banquets room, the vampires are fast enough to begin to turn their heads toward the sudden flash of light, but then a cloud of shattered glass is peppered into their faces. They all are thrown sideways from the powerful blast wave. Every window on that side of the hotel breaks, but no walls collapse. Although Blue Sabre built a bomb similar to the one used in Oklahoma City in 1995, this one isn’t as large and isn’t shaped. When it explodes at this distance from the hotel, a great amount of the energy is sent in directions counterproductive to Blue Sabre’s goal.
If he detonated it after crashing into the room though, he would have brought the entire building down. Nonetheless, when he pushed the detonator’s button, he died with satisfaction in his heart and the steel frame of the seat’s headrest ripping through the back of his brain. He died as painlessly as one can in a large explosion.
Flying Eagle’s experience is much more painful. He flies through a window on the second floor, barely misses a man watching television, and slams into a wall. The drywall crumbles off the studs behind him, then it falls down on top of him in the thin gap between the wall and the hotel room’s double bed.