ONSET: To Serve and Protect

by Glynn Stewart

  ONSET

  To Serve and Protect

  Copyright 2016 by Glynn Stewart

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Other books by Glynn Stewart

  Chapter 1

  The police cruiser radio crackling unexpectedly to life shocked David, resulting in boiling hot coffee spilling across his uniformed legs. The rookie in the seat next to him started to pass him Kleenex, freezing as Dispatch’s words sank in.

  “All units, all channels. Armed robbery at three six five Center Street, witnesses report at least four entering the building, shots fired, at least one staff down. All units respond immediately. Repeat, armed robbery at three six five Center Street, multiple offenders, at least one down. All units respond immediately.”

  Ignoring the burning sensation dripping down his legs, the dark-haired police officer grabbed the radio. They were only a few blocks away, and he threw the cruiser into gear as he thumbed the transmitter on.

  “This is Lieutenant White,” he radioed quickly. “En route from five six zero Center.”

  He slammed on the gas as he spoke, the old cruiser’s engine whining as it shot off down the street, siren blazing to life as it moved through the night. Dispatch’s lack of response was a silent editorial on the night shift’s commanding officer being on the street at all—let alone responding to calls!

  As the cruiser approached the store, David clicked the safety off on the massive .44 magnum Desert Eagle he carried. Charlesville had grown from a small town to a large one some years back, and the police force had traded in for the larger guns in a somewhat illogical attempt to be ready for larger crimes.

  He offered the slender young officer in the other seat of the car what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Aaron Keller was the Charlesville Police Department’s newest, rawest recruit, barely six days out of the state’s training academy. This was his first night patrol, so the Lieutenant had decided to take him out himself and keep an eye on him.

  It was turning out more exciting than expected.

  The tires screeched as he spun the cruiser around to a stop just outside the door of the 7-Eleven at 365 Center Street. A massive glass front in the old brick building announced Sodas. Ice Cream. Slushies. Several streetlights illuminated the entire area in stark white light.

  “Watch the back door,” David told Keller. With the front door blocked by the police car, the lieutenant threw his door open and lunged out, hoping that Keller would be able to get around back on his own.

  The stockily built Lieutenant charged through the half-open door, turning to face the counter while he covered the room with his gun. A moment later, he had the weapon trained on the figure standing over a body slumped against the counter. A second body in a staff uniform sprawled across a collapsed set of potato chip racking mere feet away from the perp.

  “Police! Freeze!” he barked.

  The figure blurred around to face David and snarled, exposing a pair of elongated, fang-like canines that contrasted sharply with his torn black jeans and shirt.

  “Holy shit,” David breathed, and the scene seemed to freeze for a moment. A single drop of blood fell off one fang to plink onto the floor, the youth’s bloody mouth causing the officer’s brain to completely freeze.

  Then the punk moved, leaping over the rack of shelves and charged for David. Reflex and training took over, and the crack-crack of the Desert Eagle double-tapping rang through the small store.

  Two holes, easily large as a man’s fist, blossomed in the perp’s chest and he crumpled backward, sending a candy bar rack crashing to the ground in a clatter of metal and plastic. David stepped forward, desperate to check on the boy sprawled across the racking.

  Before he made it another step, however, the punk rose, suddenly—impossibly—back on his feet and charging forward. His fangs glistened with blood, and his fingers reached out like claws.

  David barely had time to think before he opened fire. He kept firing as the monster—he couldn’t call it a person anymore—stumbled but kept coming. Desperately, he kept firing until he’d emptied the magazine into the thing and it collapsed to the linoleum floor and lay still, the body now little more than gobbets of flesh held together with lengths of skin.

  Swallowing back bile with an effort, David stepped over to the fallen clerk, his hands half-unconsciously reloading the heavy pistol as he went. The young girl on the floor amidst the wreckage of the store’s shelving’s flesh showed multiple wounds—fang wounds. The mess of blood where her throat should have been confirmed his fear. She was dead.

  Fearing the worst, he turned to check over the boy. More fang wounds marked his arms and neck, but David found a pulse amongst the blood. The boy was alive.

  “Dispatch, this is Lieutenant White,” he reported into his radio, then paused to spit out the sick taste in his mouth. It didn’t help. “Need an ambulance ASAP,” he ordered, his voice calm for a moment before breaking as he continued. “I’ve got an injured boy here, one of the staff. Perp and a customer, both dead. He bit the poor girl. My god,” he said, his voice pitching higher with panic, “he just wouldn’t go down. He took a full mag from the Eagle before he…came apart.”

  “We have an ambulance en route,” the dispatcher confirmed, and paused for a moment. “Are you okay, boss?” He paused again, but David said nothing. “The guy was probably wired on steroids or some shit—they can take a lot of damage if they are.”

  “I’m okay,” David said slowly as he nodded and swallowed, then jerked his head up at the sound of an engine behind the building—where he’d told Keller to watch!

  He charged through the back door of the convenience store, into the loading area behind the building. A group of youths scattered away from the door as he flung it open, leaving Officer Aaron Keller’s corpse abandoned in the middle of the shadow. The young policeman was very clearly dead, half of his
throat missing and a rapidly expanding pool of blood surrounding him.

  The six youths, clad in torn black clothing similar to the perp in the store, ran out the alley toward the street. One of them laughed as he ran, and the light reflected off two shiny and far-too-long canines.

  The laugher looked back at David and flipped him the bird as he leapt into the back of a car parked on the brand-new cobblestone-style surface of the main street. Even as David realized that the car’s window had been smashed in, the massive blue Oldsmobile, overburdened with the six punks, took off.

  “Officer down, I repeat, officer down. Keller is dead,” David said into his radio in a calm voice he barely recognized as his own. “I have six apparent perps taking off in a stolen car,” he continued as he bolted for his car. “I am pursuing.”

  #

  Other ears than the dispatcher’s were listening to David’s panicked transmission. Like most other transmissions made in the public service, it was recorded in a database for future review. At the same moment the call was being recorded into that database, a quiet program no one at Charlesville’s police station knew about streamed it across a dedicated line onto the internet, to an automated site no human could visit.

  Moments later, it was downloaded to a server that officially didn’t exist, and a data-matching program analyzed it. Ten thousand such transmissions hit its filters every minute, but most passed by and were deleted without raising a flag.

  Lieutenant David White’s description of the man he’d killed, however, raised flags. A lot of flags. Nothing living in the world could take a full magazine from a Desert Eagle to kill. At least, nothing mundane could.

  It took sixty seconds for an analyst from the Office of Supernatural Policing and Investigation to see the flag. Thirty seconds more for him to realize just what he was seeing and grab David’s next transmission.

  Two minutes after David told his dispatcher he was in pursuit, that analyst was radioing someone else.

  #

  The first thought through Michael O’Brien’s head as the radio in the chopper’s cockpit suddenly started paging him was that this was only supposed to be a transport flight.

  With a grunt, the massive, bear-like team Commander flicked the radio on.

  “This is ONSET Nine Actual,” he answered calmly.

  “Commander O’Brien, this is Analyst McGill at OSPI,” the radio blurted out. “We have a confirmed Omicron One incident in Charlesville, Maine. We have definite confirmation on one dead civilian and one dead police officer, as well as a possible vampire kill by local law enforcement. The surviving officer is pursuing six individuals that are associates of the possible.”

  “Where the fuck is Charlesville?” O’Brien responded genially. Over the years, he’d ended up protecting innocents in some of the weirdest corners of the mainland United States, but he had no idea where this Charlesville was. Or, perhaps more accurately, which Charlesville it was.

  “I’ve already transferred the coordinates to the chopper’s computer,” McGill responded, and a quick glance confirmed it. A nav point icon now blinked on the chopper’s HUD. “I’m also linking you to the GPS transceiver in the pursuing cruiser.”

  The analyst paused. “Do a thermal sweep before you go in hot,” he suggested. “It’s possible they’re not vamps, in which case, leave it to local law enforcement.”

  “And if they’re vamps?” O’Brien asked.

  “Then the poor bastard chasing them probably won’t be a survivor for very long.”

  #

  The engine of David’s poor old police cruiser whined in his ears as he slammed the car into high gear. Old and tired as the cruiser was, it leapt forward as if possessed with a desire for revenge as David spun it around to follow the stolen Oldsmobile down Center Street.

  The moment was almost surreal, with only the brand-new gas-lamp-imitation streetlights shining onto the deserted streets as the two cars tore across the expensively cobblestone-styled pavement of Charlesville’s touristy downtown, their engines and David’s sirens ripping apart the peaceful night.

  “Dispatch, this is Lieutenant White,” David said, hitting the radio with a single finger, his hands white on the steering wheel. “Have whoever is in position move to blockade the south end of Center Street; we’re maybe two minutes out.”

  “Bairns and McClaren are pretty much there,” Dispatch told him. “They’ll be ready.”

  The night shift Commander took a deep breath and said the words he’d never expected to say in his life.

  “Make it clear,” he said quietly, “that they are to shoot to kill. These guys have already killed one cop tonight.”

  It was almost as if the punks were listening in on his radio. Moments after he ordered the blockade, the Oldsmobile swerved in a wide arc around a chunk of road construction onto a side street.

  David made up precious seconds going around the corner after them, his smaller and older—but better maintained—car making the turn in a smaller arc. He quickly reacquired the stolen car as it blazed toward the industrial park.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the police cruiser gained ground on the heavier and more loaded car. As the pair swung into the deserted industrial park with its brand-new warehouses and factories, David’s anger over Keller’s murder caused him to risk taking his full attention off the wheel for a moment. He leaned out the window and aimed the Desert Eagle at the Oldsmobile’s tires.

  The recoil of the pistol firing threw him off, dragging his whole body sideways and throwing the steering wheel over. For a few seconds, the cruiser pointed straight at the wall of one of those shining new warehouses. His heart pounding, David grabbed the wheel, yanking it over to bring the car back in line with the road.

  His shot appeared to have had no effect whatsoever, and he looked up just in time to watch the stolen car scream into a turn behind another brick-and-steel warehouse. With a desperate jerk, he spun the wheel of the cruiser and followed them around.

  The stolen car carrying Keller’s murderers had disappeared. The road they’d turned onto continued out of the industrial park across the railroad tracks, but there was no sign of the Oldsmobile.

  David slowed down, looking around to see where they would have gone. There couldn’t have been more than five seconds between them turning the corner and him following them around. They couldn’t have made it far.

  Charlesville’s industrial park was very young, all built within the last twenty years. Where the rest of the town was either picturesque old stone and wood construction or intentional imitations thereof, the industrial park was modern to a fault. A very different esthetic had ruled its construction—one of efficiency and chrome, not postcards and stones.

  That chrome caught a flicker of light in one of the alleys between warehouses—a flicker like a car’s lights turning on as a door opened, and David stopped the cruiser next to the road. There wouldn’t be any other cars here halfway through the night.

  He grabbed his radio and thumbed it on. “Dispatch, this is Lieutenant White,” he reported. “Stolen vehicle appears to have stopped between 14 and 18 Warehouse Boulevard. Suspects may be proceeding on foot or into the warehouses. I’m following them in. Send backup,” he ordered.

  Unfortunately, Charlesville only had a part-time tactical team. As the town’s third most senior officer, David led the team—and he was the only member on duty tonight. Any backup would be a long time coming—time in which Keller’s murderers could get away.

  With a long, deep breath, David picked up his flashlight and stepped out of his car, the Desert Eagle once more in his hand.

  #

  He walked softly into the alley between the two multi-story-tall warehouses, scanning from side to side with his heavy flashlight, looking for any sign of the punks he’d followed in. A nerve twinged in the back of his head, and everything seemed just a little sharper than usual. All the sights, sounds and smells of the dimly lit industrial park were clear.

  As expected, David found the stol
en blue car empty. Both front side windows were shattered, and blood slowly dripped from the jagged remnants of the glass. He realized that the original thief must have punched through the window with a bare hand. Somehow, after the events of the night, that didn’t even faze the cop. It all fit together; it was just that it fit together in a way that terrified him almost as much as Keller’s death had enraged him.

  The only light other than his was the streetlights’ reflection from the car, and David slowly surveyed it in the silence. No motion showed in the alley. For a moment, it seemed as if the six people crammed into the Oldsmobile had just disappeared.

  Then a quiet noise caught his attention and he turned to shine his light on a side entrance into one of the warehouses. A breeze had caught the open door and pulled it out before allowing it to thump back against the wall. This late at night, no door on an industrial building should have been unlocked, let alone open.

  David quietly crossed over to the door, keeping the heavy semiautomatic pointed at it. Drawing closer, it became clear that someone—or something—had ripped the entire security lock assembly clean out of the door by brute force. The door swung loose because nothing held it shut.

  With a deep breath, the police officer kicked the door open and swung around to point the flashlight and pistol in through it.

  “Freeze! Police!”

  Only silence and the deep darkness of the warehouse’s entrance answered him, and he smiled mirthlessly. Whoever these idiots were, they were obviously intending to play games. A back portion of his brain gibbered in fear of the idea of intentionally wading into a fight with a lethal weapon, but his training and the memory of the junior officer, brand-new, utterly earnest, and now viciously torn apart in an alley his first week on the job, drove him forward.

  He stepped forward into the dark of the warehouse, sweeping from left to right with the flashlight and pistol as he slowly moved through the small security checkpoint inside the door. No guard occupied the bulletproof glass booth, and shadows obscured its insides. The single security camera in the corner glinted, its tiny light marking the only life in the room.