The Alien Agenda

by Ronald Wintrick

  “Brid!” I said aloud as the thought of his safety crossed my mind. He was my son but more importantly he was the mind behind the Network and our one chance to strike back. Or did I have my preferences out of order.

  “We have to accept the fact that it may already be too late for him.” Sonafi said somberly. Her face was grim in the reflected light of an oncoming car, but my Sonafi is a realist before she is anything else, and within our long lives, we have seen the passing of many of our biological offspring. This was a one truly bad thing about lives lived as long as ours; we could live to see many of those we care about pass beyond the short, corporeal life we lived, and there is nothing that we are able to do about it. The gift of longevity was often a curse. Suddenly I felt a constriction in my chest.

  “I will not accept that! Not until I should know it for certain!” I said just as grimly. I could not understand how Fate had conspired to have us on the opposite side of the world at the one time when we had really needed to be at home. An insatiable rage filled me, but there was nothing, no one, to take it out on. All I could do was wait.

  “We need to find out what has happened in St. Louis.” Sonafi told Volga as Volga told Nikita to hold on where she was, that we were on our way.

  “I have his number.” Volga said, dexterously maneuvering the car while she sought through the digital phone book in her portable for Brid's number. When she found it, she pressed send and handed the phone to Sonafi. It was ringing by the time Sonafi put it to her ear.

  It rang until the answering machine picked up. Slowly Sonafi lowered the phone and thumbed the red off button. She knew as well as I, better than I, that Brid never went anywhere without his phone. That if he was not answering, it was unlikely to have any good connotations.

  “It may not mean anything.” Volga said, but we did not believe that. I was cursing myself for not getting one of those satellite phones before we just decided to up and travel halfway around the world. I have never liked the idea of the things because of the GPS chip that came within them. As if that would have made any difference! The Others have not attacked because they were preparing a new offensive, it seemed obvious to me now. If we had carried the satellite phones, we would probably not now be in the dark as to what was going on. I could only blame myself.

  We remained silent, each lost in his or her own thoughts, as Volga took us through St. Petersburg to reach Nikita. She attempted a number of other calls while she drove, but none were answered. I sensed Nikita before we saw her. Volga pulled over to the side of the street in what would be considered a middle-class neighborhood in America, and the Vampire materialized out of the darkness.

  She only faltered a moment as she came near to the car and sensed Sonafi and I inside it. She had not been among those who we had already met and our presence nearly overwhelmed her. Her hand paused in mid reach as she leaned over to open the door, but then a larger fear gripped her. She had seen the Others, I saw looking into her mind, and they had scared her more than any member of her own kind could, no matter how Elder and no matter how badly her body and her instincts warned her to flee from us. She stared at us through the window a moment then leaned the rest of the way to reach the handle and open the door. She opened it and got in beside me. Slowly she closed the door.

  “This is Nikita.” Volga said, and then turned to the newcomer; “I think you have heard of Marcel and Sonafi.”

  “Yes.” The girl replied overcoming her fear.

  “Do you know of a safe place to go?” I asked Volga.

  “I really don't know.” She admitted. “All of a sudden I am not sure of anything!”

  We had not fed yet so we pulled into a residential neighborhood to feed before further considering our plans. Sonafi and I went one way while Volga and Nikita went another. It was still early evening, despite all of which had occurred, and most of the lights were on in the houses around us. We chose a home and the Humans residing therein. We knew exactly what we went to. We walked right up to the door.

  This was a young couple who had never been visited by Vampires. They opened the door for us and stood back as we entered. Anyone watching would have seen what would have appeared to be welcome house guests walking up and being invited directly in. Just one young couple visiting another. We went in and I closed the door behind us.

  They waited for us as if they had been anticipating this their entire lives. Part of the mental instruction we used when we commanded Humans to open their doors to us was a kind of mental visualization of what was to come. We gave them a taste of the adrenaline and endorphins which would be their reward for their submission. The relationship was a completely parasitic one, however. They received nothing from the relationship except that jolt of pleasure. We used them, but we had no choice. We only did it because we had to. If there was any other way, I for one would embrace it readily.

  The man was big. Three hundred pounds and muscular. I drank my fill yet barely reduced his blood pressure. The woman was small, blonde and petite, so after Sonafi drained off only a small amount finished her meal on the man, using the puncture marks I had created. We had both drunk our fill and barely diminished him.

  “They'll have an appetite,” Sonafi said, “but that's about all!”

  “Should we stay here?” I suggested. I knew that they were not expecting anyone. We could send them about their normal business tomorrow without their having any knowledge we remained in their house, but Sonafi waved her hand in the negative.

  “The night is still young.” Sonafi said. “I suggest we spend the remainder of it trying to find any survivors we can. I have a really bad feeling this was far more widespread than we know.”

  Sonafi had decided we would keep moving so I nodded my agreement and we departed. The light spilling from the open doorway thinned to a slice and finally vanished as one of the Russians closed the door but could not help one last, longing look at our retreating forms. We waited in the shadows for the return of the two Juveniles, but did not have to wait long. I smelled the fresh blood on their breath before they drew near.

  “Has Brid returned your call?” Sonafi demanded as soon as they joined us.

  “No.” Volga said, not looking happy at having to be the bearer of bad news. Not after what we had done for her. “Are there others you might try to reach who would know what is occurring?”

  “Yes, but I need Internet access.” Sonafi said. “I have all their numbers in my e-mail address book.”

  Volga's phone was web enabled but it was actually simpler just to return to the home of our erstwhile hosts and print it out at one shot. Sonafi deleted the browsing history after she was finished. We left for the second time and got back in Volga’s car.

  “Maybe we had better stay here.” Sonafi suggested after the eighth or ninth call she attempted still had raised no one. “I am not sure what more we are going to be able to accomplish this night.”

  “We should try to find a house in the country.” Volga suggested, starting the car and heading it out of town. “The St. Petersburg police are only inefficient due to a studied indifference. If they are roused, and I think there will have been much to rouse them this night, they can be much like a hornets nest. They may also get a description of my car. I seriously doubt it, but it is not a possibility we should overlook. We should dump it.”

  “Do not forget the eyes in the sky!” Nikita said.

  “Eyes in the sky?” I asked.

  “Russia has a very sophisticated satellite surveillance system.” Volga said. “It's possible they will be able to follow every move we have made, once we have become persons,” she chuckled a little at this, “of interest.”

  “You are right.” Sonafi said. “We had better get rid of this car and quickly!”

  We drove to the outskirts of town and left the car in another residential area. This one an upper middle class neighborhood of large houses, several acre lots and barking dogs. If the police followed our car to this neighborhood, they would have their work cut out
for them searching door-to-door. I did not envy them the task.

  I found a length of rope and used it to tie Rostov's sword to the harness of my Cumosachi Katana. I was now armed with two of the finest weapons ever produced on Earth, plus my cane sword, a weapon supple enough to bend nearly in half, but I was still a stranger in a strange land. Far from anyone I knew or cared for and not sure that any of those even still survived. They were in a different time zone and it was possible all would prove to be okay, that they were asleep now and would soon be returning our calls, but somehow I did not believe this to be true. I just had the worst feeling.

  I envy the Others the freedom of movement their ships gave them. They were not confined as by the boundaries Earth's gravity and the necessity of a breathable atmosphere constrained us. They came and went as they pleased. Compared to our present predicament, on foot, no friend anywhere we might turn, their position to ours was as modern industrial man to aboriginal savages. This was hardly any different than my first days upon this world when, directly after my birth, I had been cast adrift by my own mother, the face which had been supposed to be nurturing had instead viewed me with horror and revulsion. I’d nowhere to flee to then any more than I had now. Life had come full circle with the suddenness of the blink of an eye.

  A Vampire came to this world prepared to survive, however. I could walk alone into any of the wildest places on this world fearlessly. I have walked alone, the only member of my species on this world, into the most inhospitable places, and have lived to tell about it. A thousand times, a million, I have survived overwhelming odds. I would survive them again.

  “You had better turn your phone off.” Sonafi told Volga as, only minutes later, we were standing at the edge of the city limits and preparing ourselves to go feral. “There is no telling when you'll be able to charge it again.”

  “It doesn't require charging.” Volga answered. “Nor does it have a GPS chip. I built it myself. I'm kind of handy that way.”

  “Oh!” Sonafi said, clearly put off by Volga's technological prowess. “I didn't know something like that was possible.”

  “Brid would have known.” I said.

  Chapter 14

  A Vampire can metabolize a lot of calories when hyper-accelerated. We burned them now, running through farmer’s fields, pastureland and finally into the forests beyond. They stretched out ahead of us now for many miles in every direction except from that which we had come. I could smell its depth and knew that this would be a place into which no one would dare to follow us. The shadow provided by the canopy of leaves overhead meant that, in a worst-case scenario, we could move or fight during the daylight hours, as long as we avoided any direct sunrays spearing through. It would be uncomfortable but not impossible.

  A cave would be ideal, or the cellar of an old abandoned homestead, but it was getting along towards dawn and neither had materialized, so we would do as the other animals, and burrow.

  “Into the ground?” Nikita asked.

  “Unless you prefer the light of day!” Sonafi answered.

  The dawn was less than a half hour distant, but like the wild animals we now so closely resembled, we had come equipped with the tools necessary to every element of our survival. I would never consider putting the good steel of my weapons into the ground. Not because it would injure them. It would not. It was merely the principle. A fighting man did not put his weapons into the ground. It was dishonorable.

  My fingernails are nearly as hard as the steel of my weapons and without hint of degradation or humiliation I picked a spot on some high ground, got down on my hands and knees and began to burrow into the earth. Dirt flew. Within minutes I had dug well below ground level. I kept digging. I sank a tunnel, eight or 10 feet down at an angle into the ground, then turned and angled it back towards the surface. Behind me the others cleared away the dirt I threw down and soon there was a chamber large enough for the four of us. When we were all inside we sealed the entrance at the bend in the tunnel and we made ourselves comfortable.

  The earth is a more comfortable than might be expected. From its bosom had we risen and it welcomed us back when we were in need of it. I fell asleep instantly, and the warm bodies of my companions made our den as cozy as anything we might have hoped for.

  Vampires have an internal clock more precise than the atomic reverberations of Crystal. We know with exactitude the moment the sun sinks below the horizon. I do not know how the process works only that it does. Even underground, with the opening to the world above me completely sealed, I still knew instantly when the sun set. Within the ground, still within my slumber, even in a strange land at a strange latitude and longitude, I knew immediately that the sun had set. I opened my eyes. Sonafi opened hers at the same moment. We looked at one another in total awareness.

  I began to dig us out, clearing a route for us up into the dusk above. Only about two feet of roots and soil separated us and soon I was standing once again in the forest, beside the hole. The rest of the group followed me out and we shook ourselves clean, or mostly so. I was still covered in ground-in dirt, but I did not concern myself with what could not be helped.

  “We make a pretty picture!” Sonafi remarked, but she was referring more to our situation than our appearance.

  While we were dusting ourselves off, Volga turned her phone back on. She had turned it off so our rest would not be disturbed as we had all been exhausted. When it reset its connection with its satellite link it gave a little beep.

  “You have mail!” Sonafi joked.

  “Let's hope it's good news.” Volga said, keying in her password and then activating the speakerphone function. She held it out in the palm of her hand, so that we might all hear. It was Brid. His near breathless, excited voice came out of the speaker.

  “I'm alive, though I wasn't meant to be. The Others attacked us while we were doing drills outside Samon Du Bon's home. The warning you gave me helped in that we were prepared for them when they came. We set up decoys and the rest of us waited to ambush them. With our Field Generation helms in-place they didn't even know what was hitting them until it was too late. We completely annihilated their force. Sweet dreams!” Then the line on the answering machine went dead.

  “The Others had a bad day all around!” Sonafi said vehemently.

  “One good blow does not a victory make.” I said, quoting an old proverb whose origins I could not, at that moment, recall.

  “It doesn't hurt.” Sonafi said.

  “Isn't Brid a Juvenile of my own age?” Nikita asked out of the blue.

  “Yes he is.” Sonafi agreed. “A very foolish young Juvenile.”

  “It's the Network and our activities which have brought this on us.” Volga said. “I can barely fathom what we have begun.”

  “The Others have been trying to eradicate us for eons.” I said. “This escalation means they are getting desperate. They would have gotten desperate sooner or later anyway, and at least now we have a plan. It is more than can be said for any time previously. At least now we stand and fight. If we do not fight, we cannot win. It has taken Brid to open all of our eyes.”

  “Can you contact your caretakers?” Sonafi asked Volga. “To get us back to St. Petersburg? We have to get back to the States.”

  “Of course. Whatever furor we roused last night in St. Petersburg will have mostly abated by now, but they will be looking for me.” Volga said.

  “A blonde in St. Petersburg!” Nikita said. “They'll have their work cut out for them!”

  “Let's not forget the excitement at Rostov's, or all of the other Vampires who met their ends evening last. I think the Human authorities will have their hands full.” I said “I don't care how efficient they are.”

  Volga called Brid first, awakening him. He had left his phone on for us and we put him to work making arrangements to get us out. Then Volga put a call through to her Human caretakers and they agreed to meet us on a road she said was not far from here. An hour and some change later we were seated within a Merc
edes sedan and speeding back towards St. Petersburg.

  Nikita was twitching and having a hard time controlling herself in the presence of the Humans. We had all used a great deal of energy the previous evening and she was now hungry. Like it would be for any of her age it was nearly impossible for her to hold back when the hunger was upon her, but these were Volga's caretakers and deserving of the trust they had given us, not to be molested, so I forced my way into her mind and with almost no effort took control of her. This was not ordinarily an easy thing to do to another Vampire, but I supposed that a combination of her proximity (she was sitting right next to me) her youth, and my own still growing telepathic ability, allowed it to occur. It had been a long time since I had taken control of another Vampire's mind in this way and I had been expecting to meet a much greater amount of resistance, especially with the hunger upon her. Yet it was so easy that I even startled myself, and I received a raised eyebrow from Sonafi as recognition.

  'I was beginning to become a little concerned!' Sonafi admitted telepathically, still eying me with a hint more than just surprise. Nikita now sat calmly, her conscious mind completely suppressed. More importantly I wondered if I would I be able to do this to one of the Others?”

  “I wonder if I could subvert one of the Others?” I asked.

  If I had grown strong enough to make this possible we might have discovered a way to seize one of them. Seize it, contaminate it with our blood, and then send it back to spread the disease. Infect them with the disease of Vampirism- but the two big ifs still stood out in my mind. If I was strong enough and if they could be infected at all!

  “It could work!” Sonafi agreed solemnly as she watched Nikita contemplatively.

  “Or we may trigger them to new, before unheard of levels of aggression.” Volga said. “A new level of aggression where they throw all caution to the wind and come at us full force!”

  “I think we have already seen the beginning of that!” I said because I was sure this conflict was going to continue to escalate until its abrupt and final ending. When only one of our species stood triumphant. “They need to finish us at any cost. The prize is within sight and we are all that stands in the way of their collecting it.”