The Regulators - 02

by Michael Clary

  Suddenly, he let go of me and dropped to the floor. I backed away immediately. He was glaring at Scalp. The hatred in his stare filled the room like a venomous shadow. I found my own knife, which I had dropped onto the floor while I was struggling to get the kid off of me.

  It was a grotesque sight when the vampire, still glaring at Scalp began to remove the knife from his head. I almost don’t want to describe the back and forth motion he used to try and remove the knife, but it wasn’t easy to watch. Maybe that’s why I chose that particular moment to finally get in the game.

  As the child was distracted with the knife in his head, I swung my own blade as hard as I could into his tiny little neck. Surprisingly, my blade didn’t go through. Yet, I did enough damage to cause his head to flop at an unimaginable angle. These creatures were denser than a normal human being. I figured that out when Scalp’s attack didn’t slice off the top of his head. For that reason, I was able to retain my grip on my knife.

  The kid turned in my direction as his black blood began to spurt all over the room. He once again began that awful moan. The moan was different this time, though. It was filled with anger as well as pain, and it ended in a shrill scream as he rushed towards me.

  Scalp grabbed at his knife when he turned his back on him. He twisted and yanked at the handle until it came free from the boys head. I swung at the child’s neck as soon as Scalp was out of the way. It wasn’t until my fourth strike that the head finally separated from the body. The black blood was everywhere. I was literally drenched in it.

  The creature was finally finished. We should have been happy. We figured out how to kill them, and we actually survived the experience. We weren’t happy at all. The experience sickened us. Regardless of what that boy turned into, he used to be a child and we had just committed an unspeakable act of violence upon him.

  However, we were on our feet immediately when the door broke off its hinges.

  In the doorway was the man of the hour himself, the famous General. Things had gone from bad to worse.

  “You weren’t thankful to receive help?”

  We would have been thankful if we were actually receiving some real help. We wanted trained professionals, instead we received a liability. As far as I was concerned, keeping this guy alive had just been added to the list of things Scalp and I needed to do. Like I explained earlier, we had zero respect for the man and being face to face with him only made things worse.

  Let me describe my first impression and maybe you will see what I’m talking about. As far as appearances go, the General isn’t as tall as I would have expected, he’s probably a shade less than six feet, but he has pretty large shoulders. He looked like he could fight. The man was dressed head to foot in bite suit protection, including the vest and high collar. So the only difference between us was the different colors. Our suits were black while his was a sort of olive drab and on the chest of his vest was a large skull with a western bandana around its mouth crossed with old timey pistols. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Instead he had a backwards Harley Davidson cap on his head.

  It wasn’t the way that he was dressed that made me really doubt him, though; it was more about his mannerisms. His hands rested on top of his mp7 instead of holding the weapon in a ready position. He had a surly expression on his face as he sized up the room. He also seemed too calm, too assured of himself. It was as if he was mentally taking control of the situation without saying a word. That sort of arrogance could get a man killed. He didn’t act like a professional.

  “You boys having a rough night?” he asked in slight drawl.

  It was the wrong thing to say to guys like us. We’re not used to needing rescue. We normally act alone without anyone around to pull our asses out of the fire if things get hot. We especially don’t want someone that we have no respect for acting like he’s doing us a favor.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  I didn’t like the way he sized me up and grinned when I asked him a question.

  “The nerds lost communication with you,” he answered. “We figured you might be in trouble.”

  “How did you get in here?” I asked.

  “Loose board on a window out back,” he answered in a tone that suggested I was an idiot.

  I walked past him to close the door. I didn’t want any unexpected visitors joining our little chit chat. As I did, I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t alone. Behind him was an extremely large man with a boyish face making sure nothing attacked from the rear.

  I motioned them both inside immediately, and then Scalp and I set about propping the door back onto its frame and barricading it with the weight of the bed.

  “Isn’t that going to make things a bit difficult for us to leave?” asked the General. “Or do you plan on having a slumber party?”

  I ignored his jabs and continued barricading the door. It wasn’t great and it probably wouldn’t keep anything out without us pushing up against it, but it was all that we had thanks to that idiot kicking in the door.

  When we were finished, I finally turned to have a few words with the General.

  “Let’s get something straight right off the bat,” I said. “I don’t buy what you’re selling. I’m not sure how you got up here without being attacked, but now you’re my responsibility, and I don’t appreciate it. From now on, you don’t move or speak unless I tell you to. Pay attention and stay behind us and maybe we can get the two of you out of here in one piece. Jeopardize us in any way and we’ll leave you behind. Got it?”

  He didn’t actually ‘get it’. He wasn’t actually even paying me the slightest bit of attention. Instead, he was kneeling over the body of the vampire child that we had just killed.

  “How many of them are there?” he asked.

  “Are you listening to me?” I demanded.

  “Not really,” he answered. “How many of them are there?”

  “There’s about thirty to forty from what I could count,” Scalp answered.

  “Rotten luck,” the General said with a sigh. “You boys are lucky to be alive.”

  “You’ve dealt with these things before?” Scalp asked.

  “Just one of them,” the General answered. “It was an adult though, nasty customer.”

  “Alright, enough of this,” I said. “You need to radio in for a rooftop extraction so we can get out of here.”

  The man moved across the room impossibly fast. He might have been as fast as those damn vampires for all I knew. I didn’t expect it. I also didn’t expect the slap he landed on the top of my helmet. I’ve been hit many, many times but never that hard. There were stars in my vision as I watched Scalp go for his weapon to back me up.

  Scalp was too slow, or maybe the General was too fast. He had a Sig leveled at Scalp’s face before the man could raise his weapon.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot here, boys,” said the General as he re-holstered his sidearm. There was a smile on his face.

  The meanings behind his actions were crystal clear. He could have killed both of us in an instant if he had desired to do so. I have to admit, I was impressed. I think he got lucky and caught us with our pants down, but I was still a bit impressed.

  Even his backup guy was ready. He had what looked to be a fireman’s axe in both of his hands, and he certainly looked like he was ready to swing that thing at us and not regret it in the morning.

  “Listen,” I said. “You guys don’t have the training…”

  “Let me stop you right there, before you make a bigger ass out of yourself,” the General said.

  He then motioned for his pal to turn around and after fishing in his backpack for awhile, he came out with two spare earpieces which he promptly tossed to me and Scalp. As soon as we had them on, the General tapped his own.

  “Hardin,” he said. “I’m taking control over the Downtown team. Make sure they know who the boss is.”

  It was only a few moments before the Colonel was relieving me of command over my team and plac
ing the General in charge. I wasn’t happy about it, but in the military you learn to follow orders.

  When the General saw the look on my face, he actually chuckled.

  “Now now,” he said. “Don’t go pulling a stomp and pout. I have no interest in hanging out with you a minute more than I have to. I just don’t want you getting all chewed up on account of me.”

  “What do you mean on account of you?” I asked.

  “Some vampire bitch is after Jaxon,” the big guy said. “He probably dated her or something.”

  “Yeah,” said the General. “I might have dated her once upon a time, but anyway, she’s set up a lot of booby traps around the city. Normally it’s a bunch of homes filled with zombies, and when we turn the doorknob or something like that, all the zombies get released and fill up the street. This is a bit different, but it’s still her work.”

  “So what are your plans for getting out of here?” I asked.

  “Getting out won’t be the problem,” the General said. “I’m more concerned about leaving a bunch of little vampires alive. How long will it be before they decide to leave this building? I’m thinking our best chance is to deal with them all while they are still in one place. In addition to that, I’m looking for a missing teammate, and I want to make sure he’s not stuck in this building somewhere.”

  “We lost more than half our team not very long ago because we tangled with those things,” Scalp said. “They aren’t like zombies. Zombies go down with a headshot. These things are hard to kill.”

  “Yeah,” the General said. “I agree with you, but it also looks like you guys figured out the winning formula.”

  The General walked over to the headless body and nudged it with his boot.

  “Not many things can keep kicking without a head,” I said.

  “Exactly, so let’s put away the pop guns and get ready to handle things up close and personal.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said. “It took both of us to take out just one of these things with our blades.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” the General replied. “You’re using some piss poor pig stickers.”

  “It’s not that,” I retorted. “These things are plenty strong and their bodies are dense. It was hard to cut through.”

  “Well,” the General said. “I guess I’ll just swing extra hard.”

  The General had no problems moving the bed out of the way of the door. After that, he was in the hall with us behind him. I’m not sure when the noises of the playing vampires had stopped, but I’m guessing it was when the General entered the building. It was completely silent.

  “Why are the lights so dim?” the big guy asked.

  “I think the electricity is faulty,” Scalp said.

  The General walked over to the nearest wall sconce and unscrewed the bulb. It wasn’t easy for him to do, he was wearing fingerless gloves and he kept burning his fingers on the hot bulb.

  “Low watt bulbs,” the General said as he bounced the hot object from hand to hand before screwing it back on the sconce.

  “This place was prepared then,” I said. “Someone must have gone around and replaced all the light bulbs.”

  “Yeah,” the General said. “I don’t think vampires are overly fond of bright light. Let’s start in that hallway where all the bodies are, and then we’ll go door to door and see what happens.”

  “That’s where we were attacked,” I said.

  “We noticed,” the big guy said.

  The light was still blinking on and off as the General searched for his missing friend among the bodies. The hallway smelled horrible. Human and vampire blood was splattered all over the walls. The bodies of my fallen teammates were almost unrecognizable.

  “He’s not here,” the General said. “Let’s start kicking down some doors.”

  “I have a better idea,” I replied. “I can pick the locks. I can do it quick, and it’ll make a lot less noise.”

  I reached into my pack for my little kit, but the General interrupted me.

  “I wouldn’t bother. They already know we’re here. When they want to find us, they won’t have any problems. It doesn’t matter how quiet we are.”

  “So what are we going to do when they come?” Scalp asked.

  “I’m going to kill them,” the General said as he shouldered open the first door he came to.

  It was, to say the least, a very ugly situation for Scalp and me. Being that we knew what the vampires were capable of, we also knew that our odds of surviving were relatively low. The General proved that he could fight, but the odds weren’t in our favor. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do about it. We had our orders.

  “It must have been a very difficult situation for you to be in. Forced to follow orders from a man you don’t believe in couldn’t have been easy”.

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’ve never followed orders from a jackass. I’m in the military for crying out loud. It’s just that, well, let’s just say that it’s been a while since I had to follow orders from someone that I did not have complete faith in.

  I could also tell from the signals Scalp was giving me that he agreed completely. When they came for us, Scalp and I would do what we were told, but if the General went down, we were going to get our asses out of that building as quickly as possible.

  Going from room to room actually didn’t take as much time as I had thought it would. There were only about ten rooms per floor and we swept and cleared each of them in less than two minutes apiece.

  It wasn’t long before we had reached the stairs for the top floor of the building.

  “Did you find anything of interest in the search?”

  Just bodies, lots and lots of bodies. The General searched every single one of them, but he still hadn’t found his missing friend. Some of the rooms had blackened out windows and no bodies. I’m guessing that some of the vampires slept in those rooms during the daytime, but I can’t be sure.

  “What do you call something like this?” the big guy said.

  “Something like what?” the General asked.

  It amazed me that they were actually capable of having normal, everyday conversations while they were smack dab in the middle of a very dangerous situation. The big guy looked a little nervous, but the General was calmly sipping water from his canteen and leaning against a wall as we took a short break.

  Another thing that surprised me was that the General never seemed to notice how cold it was in the building. Everyone else began to shiver every time we stopped moving, but not the General. I even remember rubbing my hands together in order to make sure that they’d work properly when the time came.

  “A building full of vampires, what do you call it?”

  “Let’s go with lair,” the General said. “How’s that sound?”

  “How about a nest?” the big guy said.

  “I like lair, but what does it matter?” the General asked.

  “It matters because I might freakin’ die here and I want it to sound cool.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” the General said. “I don’t think people will remember you.”

  “Fuck that,” the big guy said. “I’m part of the team now.”

  “Yeah, but you just joined up. Nobody knows you exist yet. Maybe after all this is done people will learn your name, but being that you might not even make it out of this building, I don’t think it’s that important.”

  “So can we call it a nest?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  After that, the conversation was over.

  We were about to get into the thick of it once again. We had searched the entire hotel, and we had not seen a single vampire. That meant that they were all waiting for us on the top floor. I didn’t like the situation one bit. The only positive aspect was if we were fast enough, we would be able to retreat all the way to the street without anything blocking our exit.

  “You knew this because you cleared all the floors below you?”

>   Exactly.

  “We ready?” the General said.

  All of us nodded that we were. For the first time, the General removed the tomahawk from the back of his belt. It was a little foreboding to see him go for that particular weapon. Through all the previous floors, he had simply carried a black folding knife in his hand.

  As soon as the General took his first step into the hallway, the dim lights came on. He looked back at me and smiled. He really is an arrogant bastard.

  “Why did he smile at you?”

  It was his way of saying I told you so to our earlier discussion when I wanted to use the lock picks, and he told me the vampires knew we were there and being quiet wouldn’t help us out any. The lights turning on when we reached the top floor proved that.

  The little girl in the nightgown once again stepped into the hallway. The chills shot up my spine so fierce, it was almost as if someone were pouring ice water down my back. Her walk was strange; it was almost aimless as she made her way towards us. She was playing a game. Black ooze dripped from her mouth as she looked at me and smiled.

  “You found me,” she said.

  I’m not sure why she said that, but I’m guessing it was in reference to the game of hide and seek that they were playing. I don’t think I will ever find out either. The quietness of the building was interrupted by a WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP sound as the tomahawk flew through the air and split open her forehead.

  The General wasn’t waiting to see the results. He was right behind the tomahawk, and immediately after it connected the knife in his hand slashed twice and the vampire’s head fell to the ground before her body followed it.

  “No mercy,” the General said. “These aren’t children anymore. They look like children, but they aren’t. No mercy and no hesitation.”

  I was stunned into silence and immobility. These aren’t things I’m used to mind you. I’m used to taking charge and acting. My team, my job, and my life often depend upon my ability to act intelligently under duress. However, the General actually succeeded in killing something that was entirely way to deadly for a normal man to kill, and he made it look easy. It was the suddenness that did it to me. The sudden and immediate destruction, I never before saw a man move like that.