Blood God (The Hroza Connection Book 5)

by William Vitka

  A drone streaks toward the mess. Unleashes an arc of blue heat that fries the parasitic insanity. Turns it into a puddle.

  Depression consumes me. I wasn’t close to Caleb, but he was family. He sacrificed himself to save the fort. To save the rest of us.

  Now it’s being torn apart from the inside.

  Everything he built...it’s burning.

  Cuz of that fucking cult.

  We’re so goddamn rotten as a species that we’ll kill each other—even when there ain’t very many of us left—over some bullshit beliefs.

  I run the scenario over in my head.

  So this cocksucker Davidson. He’s a sleeper agent of some kind for the cult. Happens to be a doctor. A real one. Not like Brennan. What’d she say? “The camp’s regular doctor has been on assignment for some time.”

  Davidson shows up at Fort Svoboda. A refugee. A doctor. Of course they take the asshole in. Always need more doctors these days.

  He waits. Bides his time. I don’t think the mimics were part of whatever plan he had. But they were convenient.

  I snap my fingers. Talk to the air. “Plissken said the medical droids were taken offline. Davidson disabled em to keep the mimics alive.”

  Davidson takes their blood. Stores it.

  Waits till I’m outta the picture. In my coma.

  Then, bam, he infects the camp. Injects enough people that the parasitic chaos snowballed. Even if the robots could detect it right away, they wouldn’t be starting with one. Or even the three me and Jack had to track down.

  Davidson could’ve contaminated everyone in the goddamn building.

  Everyone in any building he had access to.

  Look at you go, Sherlock.

  Durandal isn’t the most helpful of mental diseases.

  Hey now. A girl’s gotta have her secrets.

  A mimic appears down the hall from me. It walks. Slow. Face calm. Some brunette lady in a nurse’s outfit. Her dead eyes stay locked on me. Her fingers stretch. Become swinging tendrils.

  I hit her with an incendiary load from the shotgun. “No. Fuck you, no. No.” I scream. Pop blood vessels in my throat.

  The mimic fucker squeals. Most of her face torn away. Starting to smoke.

  I shoot her again. “This isn’t supposed to happen anymore. It fuckin isn’t. It can’t. I’ve survived for so long. So goddamn long.” I scream again. “Now you’re taking it away from me. I hate you. I hate you.” I reload. “You can’t take this away from me. It has to stop. You can’t take my family again. Not again. You can’t do this.”

  My shotgun makes one final argument.

  The mimic drops. Bursts into flames.

  I gotta get outside. Gotta find Plissken. DeVille. The others.

  There are no warframes engaged in the courtyard fight. Too big. Which means my folks are either fighting the infected outside the walls or they’re down in monster hell.

  My bet’s on monster hell.

  I creep along the wall. Keep the shotgun ready. Impossible to tell how many shitcock parasites are still lurking in the medical center.

  And as we all know, hospitals are notoriously terrible places to be when monsters are involved. Thus spake horror movies.

  My boots clomp against tiles in the empty hall with two steps. Then splortch when they land in the unidentifiable goo that used to be part of someone.

  Each room holds hints of something awful. Beds torn to shreds. Clothing left in sopping piles. Toys and stuffed animals covered in blood. Cracked windows.

  The lights blink out. Strobe for a couple seconds before returning.

  Gotta hope the mimics ain’t tearing apart the camp’s power grid. Losing juice would add a new layer to our crap cake. But if it’s not the mimics, I dunno what else could be sucking up so much electricity.

  I see a nurses’ station up ahead. Hop over the wraparound counter. Slip in blood like an idiot. Search for a...ah, perfect. I grab a box of empty syringes. Says 10cc, 50/BX on the side, but it looks like less than that.

  And there’s no needles on em.

  I frown. “The fuck is this shit?”

  Takes me a few minutes to find needles. When I do, it’s a bummer. Only four needles. I screw em on to the syringes. Take the caps off.

  Then I’m a reverse junkie. Sitting on my ass in a quiet corner. Belt wrapped around my bicep. I tap my forearm. Hunt plump veins. Slide the needle in. Fill four syringes with my blood. Cap em and give em homes in my vest’s breast pockets.

  Maybe not a practical weapon, but I know it’ll work.

  I hop back over the counter. Follow exit signs.

  There’s a child standing in front of the door to the emergency stairs. A little girl in jeans and a sweater. She watches me with dark brown eyes. Stares.

  Pretty much a hundred-percent chance she’s a mimic.

  On the other hand, I don’t actively try to kill kids.

  Hellbabies do not count toward that score.

  I keep the shotgun trained on her. Say, “What are you doing up here, hon? You know what’s going on, right? We need to get away from the creatures.”

  The little girl doesn’t falter. Or blink. “I need help.”

  Could be shock.

  She shrieks. Tentacles erupt from her eye sockets.

  Nope!

  I fire.

  She leaps to the ceiling. Dodges the white phosphorus. Hangs there with the sticky, melted-looking flesh of her hands.

  I reload.

  The girl’s neck snaps. Her skin twists. Her skull rotates one hundred eighty degrees. The tentacles in her eye sockets dance in the air. A snarl slithers from her lips.

  I grunt. “Yeah, well, fuck you too.” Fill her with fire.

  She loses her grip. Lands with a chunky wet thud.

  I kick her fucked up little carcass away from the door. Head into the emergency stairwell. Peer over the railing.

  There’s movement on the ground floor.

  I’m still in a weird position where I’m not sure if I can go hog-wild with the killing here. So I yell, “Any of you down there still...you? I hear anything other than ‘We’re human, please don’t fry us with a Tesla grenade,’ and I’m frying you with a Tesla grenade.”

  The movement stops. Something squishes. Drips.

  I grimace. Pull the pin on the grenade. Drop it between descending railings.

  The grenade doesn’t clang when it lands. Musta hit a soft target.

  After a second, I hear a chuff and electricity crackle. Between the crackles are moans and howls. Inhuman. Pain.

  It makes me happy. Gives me a good old murderboner. Even as the stench and smoke of cooked critters wafts into my nostrils.

  I confess I was worried about my murderboners.

  Worried I’d contracted some kind of dysfunction after we got our asses kicked at the reservoir.

  I walk down the stairs. Ignore the other floors and their closed doors. Halt on the last few steps to the ground level.

  A big pool of melted parasite insanity bubbles on the concrete. Can’t tell if the bubbles mean it’s still a little alive or just decomposing.

  I sneer. “Fuck it.” Slice my right palm open with the combat knife. Let my blood drizzle into the pool.

  Nothing happens.

  No reaction.

  I stride through the muck. Kick open the door to the main floor. It slams into the back of a mimic. Stuns the bastard. Used to be some half-handsome pencil pusher.

  I slap the shit outta him.

  Blood blasts from my hand. Splatters against the mimic’s cheek.

  In a few beats of my heart, I don’t need to worry about it attacking me or anyone else. Its features fade. Its cries weaken. Grow dim and distant.

  I can imagine it moaning, “Oh, what a world, what a world” like the witch bitch in The
Wizard of Oz. And I am very satisfied with myself.

  For I am the only man in the world who has slapped a monster—to death.

  You’re welcome.

  I walk out to the courtyard. Into the maelstrom of madness.

  A mimic lunges at me from the shattered window of a nearby building. It screeches. Tentacles flaring.

  I pull one of the blood syringes from my pocket. Ready.

  There’s a blue flash.

  The mimic explodes into dust. Ashes in the wind.

  I expect Plissken. Maybe Harryhausen.

  Instead there’s a gangly pale blue sonuvabitch alien and a frazzled looking human in a jumpsuit.

  I eyeball the alien. It’s tall. Ten feet. Maybe a little more. Thin. Delicate looking. Blue, with a bizarre disc-shaped head and the one bulging gleaming yellow eye. I say, “Who the fuck’re you?” I light a cigarette.

  The frazzled guy says, “My name’s Michael Gordineer. This’s Bugs Two. He’s a pilot. I got your message and I was able to convince the pilots... We’re here to help. We’ve got most of the creatures quarantined.”

  “Won’t stop the mimics who’re still hiding inside people.”

  Bugs Two points to me. He’s got some kinda device affixed to his hand. Shiny metal in his palm. He says, “Who fuck you?”

  I blow smoke. Arch my eyebrows at Gordineer. “He broken or something?”

  Gordineer says, “Takes em a while with language. Especially urban accents like yours.”

  I shake my head. “Sure. Fine. We’re outta time here.” I hold up the syringe with my blood in it. “The pilots, they’re all hyper technologically advanced and shit?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  I stuff the loaded syringe into Gordineer’s hands. Say, “How quick can they farm this blood? Duplicate it? We need enough to bathe the goddamn camp in it.”

  He shoots me a confused look. “Wait, wait. In all seriousness, who are you?”

  “I am the antidote.”

  22. Raining Blood

  The Spartans circle the courtyard.

  The robots patrol both outside the walls and in.

  Pilot terminator squads haunt the businesses and apartments. They eradicate any trace of the infection. The mimics.

  We gave em that job special.

  Cuz they wouldn’t care about killing someone’s friend or neighbor. Mom or dad. Son or daughter.

  Me and my family, we wouldn’t care either.

  But the survivors who still consider themselves fully human might.

  Other pilots watch the courtyard from rooftops. Silent sentinels.

  Their saucers hover over the camp. Huge, metal replicas of the strange heads. Even down to the yellow orb at the center.

  What the aliens are all watching is us.

  Me. DeVille. Jack. Catarina. Athena. Aiden. Booker. Sarah. The congregation of survivors who managed to stay alive through the mimic assault.

  Only eighteen hundred outta three thousand.

  A sea of faces that’re tired and scared and confused.

  I didn’t tell anyone except my family and Gordineer what I want the pilots to do. I didn’t want any hidden mimics to know what’s coming. I didn’t even let the Spartans keep their helmets on.

  I want this huge gathering of people to wait. Listen.

  Observe.

  I wanna see who’s who.

  I point to the sky.

  The alien saucers move. The hum of their engines fills my ears. They spread out. Their central orbs shift from yellow to red.

  Liquid pitters and patters around the camp.

  It’s raining blood.

  My blood.

  Booker and Sarah tense.

  Athena and Aiden are stone-faced. Pulse rifles in hand.

  The survivors notice slowly. Then gawk in horror as my hemoglobin covers em. Mats down their hair of their children. Their babies. They shriek as the pilot’s duplication of my blood drenches em.

  Only Madison and Gunnar don’t completely lose their shit. They hold each other in the thick downpour.

  The looks of terror on the others shift to the forms of the mimics in their midst. Creatures they didn’t even know were right beside em. Wretched beasts that crumple into grey heaps before they can attack any fresh, uninfected flesh.

  I watch people scream and wail as family members dissolve into parasite pudding.

  Even children.

  Even some of those babies.

  I wanna tell em that those goddamn children—those goddamn babies—were just abominations in hiding. That they were just waiting until they got tucked in at night before they plunged their tendrils into a parent’s caring face to convert em.

  Converge with em.

  That’s what the parasite wants.

  Convergence.

  Assimilation.

  The red rain ceases.

  Plissken and Harryhausen hover next to me.

  My old robot pal says, “The camp is clear.” He shakes some congealed gore from his frame. “The pilots will continue to clone your blood and, after we ensure that you haven’t traumatized the entire population beyond repair, we’ll begin injections. They may not become emergent, but they should become immune to infection. I will mention the obvious, though: This is highly speculative.”

  I nod. “Understood.”

  Plissken pauses. “As I’ve said many times, I don’t think you’re the smartest human on the planet—however, you can be terribly clever.” He puffs his thrusters. “I confess that I wish I had thought of the idea. Though before the pilots arrived, this plan might have involved throwing you in a juicer.”

  What’s scary is that he ain’t joking.

  DeVille takes my hand. Squeezes it.

  Blood smears our smiles.

  Jack pats my back with a wet slap.

  Catarina hugs me. Cups my cheeks in her hands. A wave of sadness crosses her face. “Caleb was right about you.” She frowns. Fights to regain her grin. “But then, he was always right.”

  I say, “He give you guys any hints about what we’re supposed to do next?”

  Jack shakes his head. Lights a bloody American Spirit. “He told us we’re supposed to listen to you. Told us you’d get the hang of being a leader.” He tilts his head toward Catarina. “Me and your mom are advisors.”

  I wanna chuckle.

  That’s a fuckin joke, right?

  Only thing I’m good at is killing and almost getting killed.

  I look to Athena. DeVille.

  They both nod.

  I consider it.

  Caleb was convinced the planet was lost. So were my parents.

  There was no hope of winning. Nobody let any hint of hope shape their thoughts.

  Not doom and gloom so much as dealing with grim reality.

  But that was before the pilots arrived. With the pilots’ technology, we might be able to inoculate the entire camp. We might be able to stop the spread of the parasite.

  We can make a stand.

  We can go to war.

  It’s not quite as dangerous to hope.

  I tell my family, “We’re gonna take New York City back.”

  I am the blood god.

  About the Author

  William Vitka is a writer and journalist. He’s written for The New York Post, CBS News, Stuff Magazine, GameSpy, On Spec Magazine and The Red Penny Papers to name a few. He is currently a writer for Permuted Press, Post Hill Press and Curiosity Quills. He doesn’t think any politician can be trusted and believes there is always more blood for the blood god.

 

 

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