“Move the third drone to a forward position. I want to contain these bastards. I don’t want them getting any closer to the base proper than they already are.”
“Yes, sir,” the tech responded then replied that the third drone was circling between the vampires and the base, raining down hell on the advancing blood suckers.
Max entered the command center and looked around for Dr. Peters. He saw Evan toward the rear and worked his way through the crowd with Viktor in tow. Mitchell intercepted Viktor and caught his attention. “Did he fix you, too?”
“Fix?” Viktor asked.
“Make it so you didn’t shift?”
“Oh, yes. Rather liberating, isn’t it?” Viktor said with a smile.
“What I wouldn’t give to be able to turn it off.”
Viktor noticed that Max had caught up with Dr. Peters. “I need to go. I have a specialty weapon to pick up.”
“Good hunting,” Matt offered.
*****
Laura grabbed Barbara’s hand and slowly led her back up to an office area. “We can stow our stuff here.” She kept peeking out the cracked door as she rifled through her bag.
“What are you looking for?” Barbara whispered.
“A gun,” Laura whispered back. “I don’t have silver rounds like the squads do, but right now, anything is better than nothing.”
Barbara slipped her hand into the side pocket of her bag and extracted the pistol that Bob had brought her. She wrapped her hand around the grip and thought better of announcing that she had it. She weighed the options in her head. She didn’t like the possibility that Laura might try to take it from her, especially if she discovered that she actually had silver ammunition.
“Just stick with me and I’ll get you out of here,” Laura whispered from the doorway.
Barbara chose discretion and slipped the pistol into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back and pulled her shirt over it. Kicking her bag beside Laura’s she fell into step behind her. They had just cleared a corner when Laura’s radio sounded. “Ms. Youngblood, we just cleared the first floor and the second. What is your location?”
She put the radio to her mouth and Barbara tapped her shoulder and pointed animatedly. She keyed the radio so that it couldn’t broadcast, but didn’t speak. Turning very slowly she looked in the direction that Barbara pointed and saw a shadow along a wall that appeared very large and bushy.
Both women backed up slowly and returned the way they came. When they reached the other side of the floor, Laura spoke into the radio, “Third floor, near the training area south entrance. I think we just spotted it by the north entrance. Whatever it is, it’s HUGE.”
“Copy that, ma’am,” a voice responded. “We’re on the south side. We’ll work our way north and come down the stairwell on that side. Maybe we can box it in.”
“Negative!” she whispered. “When I say this thing is huge, I mean it makes Apollo look tiny. Do you copy me?”
There was silence on the line for a moment before the voice returned, “Affirmative, ma’am. We’ll take it from here.”
“Son of a…” she wanted to throw the radio in frustration. She turned to Barbara, “They’re going to get themselves killed!” Her eyes were wide with fear. “The squads are augmented and they couldn’t survive against one of these things!”
“So what do we do?” Barbara asked.
Laura sighed and thought. “Short of drawing it away from them, there’s nothing we can do.”
Barbara looked at Laura and set her jaw. “Can those things open doors?”
Laura gave her a blank look. “I have no idea, Barb. Why?”
“I have an idea.”
*****
Sheridan paced the roof, his sights set on the bunker across from the roof he now stood on. He had spread his men to the four corners and scattered them as best that he could and still stay within operational parameters. He placed himself at the front of the building so that he could keep an eye on the command center. The steel reinforced concrete arched building didn’t have many windows, and the few that it did have were low to the ground, blocking his view to the interior.
As the Hercules and the drones fired upon the advancing monsters in the distance and orange ash rose into the air, the horizon gave off an eerie glow and sounded as though continuous thunder were rolling in. Sheridan ignored the battle and studied the bunker windows instead.
He cursed to himself and brought the scope to his eye once more. All he could see was one computer technician operating a joystick. Probably some non-com running a damned drone.
Sheridan sighed and lowered his rifle. He knew that the glass in those windows would be blast proof, but he was hedging his bet that his depleted uranium round would pierce it. He held the sniper rifle in his hands and waited. Surely this arrogant son of a bitch would go to the window to see the destruction…and when he did, Sheridan planned to remove his head from his shoulders.
*****
Hammer piloted the SCOUT vehicle three clicks to the far side of the train and killed the lights. He and Dom pulled on their night vision goggles and drove as quietly back toward the waiting transport as they could. They zipped along empty cargo cars until they reached a caboose amidst the myriad of rail cars and killed the SCOUT. Both men exited the vehicle and pulled their carbines. They approached the train as silently as they could, checking for tripwires or booby traps along the way.
Dominic climbed aboard the caboose and slowly pushed the door open, his night vision slowly dimming then amplifying the low light interior. He keyed his lip mic, “Bingo.”
Hammer jumped up onto the caboose platform and entered the caboose with him. With the two overly large men inside, the caboose was nearly full. Dom pointed to a shipping crate shaped box along one wall. He whispered to Hammer, “What do you bet that’s it?”
“One way to find out.” Hammer stepped forward and lifted the lid.
Dom peered inside and smelled the deep, rich earthy scent of soil and smiled. “Gotcha,” he whispered.
“Now what?” Hammer asked.
“We dump it all the way back.”
The men bent down to retrieve the box just as something small and crazed leapt from the darkness screeching at them like a howler monkey.
It climbed onto Hammer’s back and clawed at his face, ripping the night vision goggles from his eyes. Hammer cursed and tried to grab the howler monkey from his shoulders, but the little bastard was too quick and too strong. Dominic pulled his weapon up, but didn’t dare fire or he might hit Hammer. Instead, he simply reached out and grabbed the small, rabid vampire by the back of the neck and lifted him from his partner as the little vampire screamed and screeched, thrashing about in mid-air screaming something unintelligible.
“What the fuck do we do with him?” Hammer asked above the yelling.
Dom shrugged. “Beats the shit out of me,” he yelled. “I don’t want to shoot him, it might attract more.”
“Like his screaming hasn’t attracted them already.” Hammer held his hands up to deflect the onslaught of whirling arms and legs.
Dom nodded. “You’re right.” He kicked up the lid on the box of earth and shoved the little vampire into the crate then slammed the lid down, the little monster inside scratching and clawing at the lid. He looked at Hammer and asked, “Silver nitrate or UV?”
Hammer shrugged and said, “Both?”
Each man pulled a different grenade from his vest and pulled the pin. They flicked the release lever and counted then lifted the lid and slid the grenade into the box and slammed the lid down, latching it. Both men dove for the door of the caboose and hit the ground outside just as the grenades went off. The resultant explosion blew the sides out of the caboose and sent splinters of wood, bits of imported soil and pieces of Kentucky fried asshole flying into the desert night.
Hammer lay on the ground looking up at the full moon and the night sky. “Well, that was interesting.”
“Yeah. Let’s hope that was
n’t the engineer,” Dom chuckled.
*****
“Sicarii!” the enforcer yelled. “It is a trap! The hunters were prepared for our attack!” He screamed as he fell to the ground in front of him, black blood pouring from an open wound in his shoulder. The wound must have been from a silver bullet as it was not healing, but appeared to have passed cleanly through without killing him.
“Fool, they are not prepared for the destruction that is the Sicarii!” the dark vampire snarled. “This is their attempt at defending themselves from our overwhelming numbers!”
“Sicarii, they have brought the sun!” the enforcer cried, trying to get to his knees. “The forward wave has been all but decimated, completely ashed in the blink of an eye as if touched by the finger of God Himself. It crosses their paths and all of their children die with them at its touch!”
The dark vampire’s eyes narrowed and his brows knit together as he rose from his makeshift throne. He stood tall and gazed out across the sea of advancing bodies and saw the light come from the sky again, burning a path of destruction through his army and the resultant orange ash rise into the night sky. He felt the cold fingers of dread grip his dead heart and twist at him.
Now he knew what he was overlooking. He knew what he forgot to take into mind when he planned his attack on creation…in man’s resourcefulness at killing each other, he had developed weapons that could be turned against even vampires. Weapons of Mass Destruction that could result in devastating losses to even an army that was nearly a million strong of undead.
The Sicarii shook with rage as he stepped down from his throne and stepped through the advancing crowd of warriors, still fighting each other to advance to the battlefield. His anger grew as he looked up into the heavens and he recognized the witchcraft that he faced now.
TECHNOLOGY.
“Sicarii, what can we do?” The enforcer held a hand over his wound to stave off the flow of blood from his shoulder.
“Be still, my warrior,” he said softly. “I will destroy this atrocity myself so that my army can feast on the life blood of my enemies.”
The dark vampire shot through the crowd so quickly that the enforcer never saw him leave. He simply vanished. He blinked his eyes to clear them to make sure he hadn’t imagined it, but his eyes did not deceive him…his master had disappeared.
The Sicarii had no sooner dove into the crowd before he felt the sudden drop in his energy levels...and this wasn’t from the loss of his forces. He stumbled and slammed into more than a handful of his own people before he realized exactly what had happened. He paused and stared back at the train, his eyes straining past the onrushing forces to the slowly rising pillar of smoke beyond the hills behind him. His anchor to his homeland had been destroyed and he could feel the energy from that tie fading.
The Sicarii ignored the frenzied vampires pushing past him and choked back the seed of fear that caught in his chest as his eyes followed the bluish grey smoke rising up into night sky. Slowly he turned back to the task at hand and steeled himself for the slaughter that was about to unfold at his own hands. He snarled with guttural hatred as his feet dug into the soft sand once more. These humans would pay.
*****
Damien fought his way through their own forces, his eyes feral, his face set in a vicious snarl. As each vampire from the attacking horde fought their way up the embankments, Damien raced past the others to face them. He could sense their power or lack of it as they approached each other, and most were mere baby vamps, unworthy of his time or efforts. Most would bare their fangs and try to attack with their nails, but he’d merely rip their heads from their shoulders and roll it back down the embankment, ready to race off with the next one.
Rachel spoke up as he ran from vampire to vampire, ending them before they ever really got the opportunity to begin. “I’ve found a cluster for you, lover,” she whispered in his ear. “But you’ll have to wait for them.”
“Where?!” he shouted above the roar of the battle.
“No need to shout, my love. I’m here with you always.”
“Show them to me,” he growled, growing impatient with these young, powerless vampires.
“They are at the rear of the pack. Cowering from the human made sun. The Sicarii has ordered them forward, and they are coming, but they are coming slowly.”
Damien growled again and started to move down the embankment toward the flowing mass of bodies. “What are you doing?!” she exclaimed. “You’ll be the end of us both!”
“Not if I stay to the edges.”
“The flying machines are destroying everything along the edges!” she cried.
“And they just passed by,” he answered her as he fought against the tide. “It will take a few moments for them to realign themselves and start again.”
Vampires all around him began ashing and exploding as a POD station lit them up, destroying them where they stood and Damien dove for the furthest edge of lake bed, barely avoiding the .50 caliber fire. Shrapnel from the rounds hit the surrounding rock and rained down around him, burning his skin where it touched. But Damien ignored the pain and took to his feet again, fighting the flow of bodies.
“At least go along the tops of the ridges. You’ll not have to fight the flow,” the soft female voice directed. Damien shifted to his left and ran up and along the curve of the ridge, gaining speed and came back down at the rear of the flow. “There they are.”
He plunged into the crowd and came in behind a group of vampires whose age and power flowed from them like a beacon. They were so densely packed and focused on what was happening before them at the lake bed that none noticed him drive his hands into the backs of the two in front of him and rip their hearts from their bodies. Those behind marched over their corpses as they advanced, grinding them into mush. He bit large pieces from each heart and swallowed them down, fighting the sickening feeling of their power becoming part of his own as he moved with the flow and devoured the power of two more in his path.
“Yes, my love!” Rachel cried in his head. “Eat! Eat and become powerful!”
Damien continued to sneak attack the most powerful of them until she called to him again, “Lover?”
“What?” he mumbled with his mouth dripping black.
“You must hurry.”
*****
Mitchell had just moved forward to better see the monitors when something very large hit the blast windows…HARD! The blast proof acrylic cracked within the stainless steel frame and the concrete holding it in place showed stress fractures along the lower corner.
“What the fuck was that?” Spalding asked, pulling his carbine to the ready and focusing on the window.
“Exterior view. Now!” Tufo ordered.
The technician operating the multiple cameras turned to him, “Sir, we don’t have any eyes outside the bunker itself.”
Mark gave the man a hard stare. “Why not?”
The tech shook his head. “I don’t know, Major.”
“I never ordered it,” Mitchell said.
Jack turned away from the window and held a hand up. “Sheridan’s on the roof of the Headquarters Building. Maybe he can give us an on scene report.”
Tufo nodded to him and Jack keyed the radio, “Newcastle Actual, come in.”
“Go ahead, Chief,” Sheridan responded.
“Something just rattled the entire bunker here. Looks like it hit the window but we can’t make out anything. Do you see anything outside that could have caused it? Over.”
“Wait one. Repositioning,” Sheridan lied. A moment later he came back on the radio. “Negative, Jack. The area surrounding you is all clear,” Sheridan’s voice crackled across the overhead speakers in the OpCom.
Jack looked about the room and stepped to the window to peer out. With the red light inside and the full moon out, he expected better visibility, but he couldn’t see much. “Any activity at your location, over?”
“That’s a negative, mate. Nice fireworks show on the lake bed though
, over,” Sheridan reported.
Jack turned around and shook his head. “No idea, boss.” He shrugged his shoulders again just as something hit the window hard enough to knock him away from it. He rolled from the window and came up with his carbine pointed at the opening. He was shocked to see that the blast proof acrylic was now cracked in a jagged ‘X’ pattern and the concrete was splitting away at the corners along the bottom on both sides. Dust and sand settled on the floor from the cracks.
Jack keyed his mic again and yelled, “Sherry, goddammit, what’s out there?”
“I’m telling ya, mate, I’m not seeing anything!” he yelled back. “If somebody’s attacking you, I’m not seeing it! There’s no blast, no debris, no incoming plumes…I don’t know what to tell ya.”
Jack turned back to Tufo and then Mitchell. “I’m going out there.”
“Negative!” they both shouted at the same time.
Mark stood up from the command chair. “So far, we are secure in here, and protecting the controls to this satellite is essential to the plan, Chief!”
“I concur,” Mitchell stated.
“That’s why I’m going,” Max said, stepping toward the front of the room.
“As am I.” Viktor draped the crossbow across his shoulder.
“I can’t allow—” Mitchell began.
Max held up a hand to stop him. “Colonel, we’ve already had this discussion. If that is the Sicarii trying to get in here, I’m likely the only one who will be able to stop him.”
“Firing again,” the satellite control tech reported.
“If they’re going out there, they may need cover fire,” Jack said.
Mitchell ground his teeth until he was sure it could be heard over everything else. He looked at Tufo who was shaking his head. “I don’t like this.”
“This is my fight, Major,” Max said expectantly.
“Your call, Mark. This is your dance,” Matt said.
“Yeah, hang it all on me,” he muttered. “Fine. Go. But take Phoenix with you.”
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