“Because the vampire is wounded, and she’s probably heading your way. I want you and Georgie to jump down into the pit and pretend that you are one of her captives. Have Javie and Merrick wait in one of the bedrooms.”
“What do we do if she shows up?”
“Fill her with holes,” I answered.
After I was done talking to Dudley, I reached into my backpack and grabbed some duct tape. Then I used my tomahawk to chop up a little end table from the lobby. I shoved my kneecap back into the correct position, placed two pieces of the end table on either side and taped everything up. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it immobilized my knee just enough to allow me to move.
“You shoved your knee cap into the correct position? Didn’t that hurt?”
It hurt like a bitch, but it takes time to heal, and time was something we didn’t have. I didn’t want to leave the team to face an angry vampire while I nursed a booboo. I still had a nasty limp, and my leg was shooting out sparks of pain, but I made it all the way to the loose window board and outside to the rear of the building.
The Jeep was parked across the street and down the road a bit.
I was using Nick’s shoulder for support as we came around the building and started to cross the street. There were zombies there. They must have been attracted by all the noise but were unable to pinpoint exactly where the noise had come from so they were just wandering around the street.
This is the same mistake I kept making. I got so caught up in the vampires that I forgot about the zombies, and every time I did that, it came around and tried to bite me on the ass. There weren’t enough zombies coming towards us to normally freak me out, but I was far from top condition.
It was a little bit funny to see Nick’s eyes go wide as he saw them rushing towards us. I would have laughed, but my knee was really killing me and it sort of felt like it had once again slipped out of its correct position.
Both of us began to fire on them as they came nearer and nearer. I didn’t even think about using my knife or tomahawk. There was just no way that I’d be able to go hand to hand with my leg being jacked up the way that it was.
I fired and fired, but then the worst possible thing that could have happened, did.
One of the zombies screamed.
It was a real nasty one too. For whatever reason, all of the skin beneath its nose was missing and it seemed to have a permanent smile as it looked at me and screamed. Both Nick and I stopped firing for just a moment as we waited to see just how much trouble that scream was going to bring.
We heard answering screams echo around the city in response.
In fact, we heard a lot of answering screams. We needed to get the hell out of there and we needed to do it fast. The current zombies were bad enough, but if mobs of them showed up before we made ourselves scarce, we would have to waste time losing them in the Jeep before we could meet up with Dudley, or we’d end up trapping ourselves in the house.
The problem with taking time to lose any large mobs of zombies following us was that my nephew and the rest of the team were waiting to ambush a hungry vampire, and they were going to need our backup.
Over the moans and screams, I told Nick to go get the Jeep while I handled our noisy followers. I figured we would be able to leave the area faster if I stopped slowing him down and allowed him to bring the Jeep to me instead.
“Dude,” Nick said. “Are you serious? How are you going to fight with your leg all fucked up?”
“It’s not a debate,” I replied.
Reluctantly, he left me. Thankfully, he could move really, really fast for such a big guy which was good for him since the zombies were only about fifteen feet away. I was shooting and shooting, but I just wasn’t fast enough to take them all out before they closed the distance.
When the fist one reached me, I smacked it away with the barrel of my weapon just as the second zombie to reach me grabbed a hold of my shoulders and attempted to bite through the bite proof collar of my vest.
I responded instantly by dropping my mp7 that was stuck between our bodies and reaching for the Sig on my side. I pulled the pistol quickly, shoved the barrel under the zombies chin and popped off a shot straight to its brain.
As that zombie fell, the first zombie that I had smacked away dove for my legs and wrenched my bad knee. The pain was incredible, and I think I even screamed out as I fell to the ground. Somehow I managed to work my left hand under its cold and clammy chin and pushed its head back and away from my neck. After that, it was easy enough to pop off a bullet through its forehead.
The next zombie literally dove from about five feet away and landed on my chest. He was trying to bite into my stomach, but my bite suit prevented penetration, and I was able to fire a round through its temple.
After that, there were more zombies trying to pile on top of me. The situation royally sucked for me because my wounded leg made getting back to my feet extremely difficult, and every time I tried, another zombie dove on top of me.
I think there were about four of them smothering me when I heard the sweet rumble of the Jeep and the muffled shots of Nick’s mp7. After pushing the corpses off of me and using the Jeep to get back to my feet, I became aware of Nick screaming at me to hurry.
I really didn’t want to look back down the road and see what he was so upset about, but damned if I couldn’t help myself. One glance was all I needed. The road was filled with zombies, and the mass was getting bigger and bigger.
I dove into the Jeep as Nick hit the gas pedal.
The zombies were so close that a bunch of them were actually able to grab a hold of the Jeep and begin to pull their decaying bodies inside before I managed to sit up in the passenger seat and fire off a bunch of headshots.
The worst had happened. We had a horde of hundreds of zombies following us, and we’d need to waste precious time losing them before we could meet up with the rest of the team. Nick was laughing.
“What the hell are you laughing about?” I asked.
“I totally saved your ass back there.”
“As opposed to all the times I saved your ass?” I retorted.
“When did you save my ass?” Nick asked. “I’d like to hear when you saved my ass, because that’s news to me. Maybe you’re just upset that you actually had to rely on someone other than yourself. You saved my ass, bitch please. I’m the hero in this vehicle.”
I was actually ignoring him. Somewhere in the middle of his rant I unfortunately looked down at my leg and realized that everything below the kneecap was twisted and bent at the wrong angle. I had no idea where the pieces of wood that I was using to keep my leg immobilized had fallen, but they certainly weren’t stuck to my leg anymore. All that remained was a wad of stretched out duct tape.
The worst thing about it was it didn’t hurt.
I simply couldn’t feel a thing from my kneecap all the way down to the tips of my toes. I wasn’t sure which was worse, my seriously fucked up leg or the mass of zombies twenty feet behind us.
“Can you heal that leg?” Nick asked when he saw how bad the damage was.
“Yeah, but it will take time, and I need water or something natural,” I replied.
“What do you mean something natural?”
“Something living, like a plant or grass,” I answered.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, I think I might be going into shock or something. I’m not sure.”
“How can you not be sure if you are going into shock?” Nick asked.
“I’m not sure because I never went into shock before, you douche bag. Have you ever gone into shock?”
“No, but if I was going into shock, you can bet that I’d know it,” he snarled back at me.
“Whatever, just figure out a way to lose that mass of zombies. We don’t have time for this shit. We need to meet up with the team.”
Once again, Nick started to laugh.
“What?” I asked.
“You just sit back and rest your pretty litt
le head. I got this shit covered. I know where to go, maybe you’d know as well if you ever left the Westside. “
I honestly didn’t have the energy to waste arguing with him. I didn’t have much energy to do anything other than attempt to keep my limp body from sliding off the seat onto the floorboards of the Jeep, and the stars that were starting to dance around in my eyes told me that very soon I was going fail at that attempt as well.
In retrospect, I’m glad I passed out as Nick flew around the city because what I actually managed to see of his driving was nothing short of terrifying. He would charge straight at a car parked on the side of the road and wait until the very last second before he veered around it. I couldn’t count how many times he bounced over a curb. If I hadn’t buckled myself into the Jeep, I’m pretty sure I would have eventually bounced out.
I’m not exactly sure what he did, but I came to when we began to slow down and realized that he had somehow gotten behind the great mass of zombies. I watched with heavy eyes as they ran up the street and away from us.
I wanted to ask what was going on, but Nick motioned for me to be quiet as he reversed the Jeep into some sort of enclosed area. After that, he got out of the Jeep and closed some sort of metal door on a track, and we were hidden from the street.
“You got any quarters?” he asked when he finally came back.
When I didn’t answer, he snorted through his nose and vanished. Less than five minutes later, I felt hot water spraying down on me from above. The water was invigorating. Instantly the dancing stars in my vision vanished, and I was able to sit up straight.
“I used to work at one of these places,” Nick said. “I managed to jam it on spray so you can fix your leg. You look like hell.”
I ignored Nick as I pulled up the leg of my pants and exposed my purple and black knee to the spraying water. It hurt even worse than the first time, but once again shoved my kneecap into the correct position as I straightened out my leg under the water.
I’m pretty sure my kneecap would have placed itself in the correct position if I’d simply waited, but I was in a rush to speed things along. Still, the pain of the slow healing process was making me grit my teeth.
“Is that shit working?” Nick asked.
“Nick,” I growled through clenched teeth, “one more word and I’m going to shoot you.”
I waited only a few moments. I wanted to get a grip on the pain before I collected my thoughts.
“How long were we driving around?” I asked.
Nick did not answer.
“NICK!” I shouted. “How long were we driving around?”
“You told me not to talk asshole,” Nick said.
“What are you, twelve?” I asked while he started laughing.
“Damn, you’re a moody bastard,” Nick said. “We were only driving around for like five minutes. I told you not to worry.”
He’d lost them in five minutes. I could barely believe it, but the lack of light coming through the open spaces around the door confirmed that it was indeed not yet daylight outside.
There was still time to meet up with Dudley before the vampire got there first. I mean seriously, how fast could an injured vampire move?
Actually, don’t answer that question. It’s not really important. What is important is how fast we tore out of that carwash the second after I pulled some metal brackets off the wall and attempted to tape them against my leg. I was hoping that they’d last a bit longer than the wooden table pieces, but I wouldn’t have bet any money on it.
“Your leg isn’t fixed yet?” Nick asked.
“Do you think that my kneecap is normally the size of a grapefruit?”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s pretty fucking bad, dumbass,” I answered. “Not as bad as it was, but that’s sort of relative I think.”
“Will you be able to walk on it?”
“I think I will be able to limp on it. Everything seems to be in the correct place, but I doubt the connective tissue has gotten a real firm grip. Then again, I’m not exactly a doctor, so how should I know?”
“Maybe you should sit this one out. I can take up your slack.”
“You think so?” I asked. “You think you can do some of the things I did in that hotel? They ought to write songs about my awesomeness. I doubt they would do the same for you though. Nothing really song worthy about hiding out in the Camino Real.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was plotting. I was devising a plan that would allow me to destroy all my enemies, and for fuck’s sake, how the hell do you close the top on this thing? I’m freezing my ass off.”
I fortunately hadn’t even noticed how cold it was until he started complaining. Cold weather just didn’t seem to bother me much anymore. Once he pointed it out, I realized that it was cold, but it still didn’t bother me much.
Fortunately, the cold air wasn’t slowing him down any. The man was hauling ass. It’s a really nerve-racking experience being in a vehicle with that guy when he’s in a hurry, but I wasn’t about to complain. He was making excellent time. The sky was just starting to brighten up when we finally made a wild left turn on Mesa. You would have thought that Nick would need to slow down somewhat and pick a course through all the abandoned cars on the street, but he didn’t.
Instead, he floored it. He slammed the brakes. He shoved cars out of his way and he even jumped the curb and tore off on some sidewalk when he got frustrated.
“I’ve always wanted to do this shit,” was all he said when he caught me staring at him.
On the plus side, he had at least begun to lighten up and relax a bit. He seemed just a little too tense when we were back at the hotel fighting the vampires. I was beginning to get a little worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle the stress.
It seemed as if he’d somehow found a way to adjust.
“Are you gonna kill this bitch, or are you going to try and capture her?”
“I’m going to kill her,” I answered sharply.
“If you kill her, how are you going to find out anything about Kingsley?” Nick asked.
I didn’t have an answer for that. I hadn’t even thought about it, and now that I was, I still didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t too sure that we would be able to capture her. She was scary tough. If we went in with anything less than lethal intent, she’d probably tear us apart.
In the end, I had to go with extreme violence. If the opportunity to ask questions arose, I’d take advantage of it, but I was by no means expecting that opportunity to arise. It wasn’t like she was exactly talkative whenever we got up close and personal.
“If you weren’t going to get any information out of her about Kingsley, what were you going to do to find him?”
Tear the damn city apart.
I don’t doubt him for an instant. There’s nothing about the man that would even lead me to believe that he was being anything less than brutally honest. His dedication to his friends has no bounds. There simply wasn’t enough danger in the entire world that would make him give up until his friend was safe and sound.
It’s hard not to respect him even more.
“What happened when you got to the house on Baltimore?”
We drove through a nice park and parked right next to where Dudley had parked his Jeep. The idea was to not let the vampire know that we were waiting for her to show so neither of the Jeeps were directly in front of the house. It wasn’t like we had hidden them extremely well, but dawn had arrived. The first rays of sunlight were peaking over the mountain and repelling the darkness away for yet another day.
I was betting that she’d be in such a hurry to find a quiet and dark hiding place that she wouldn’t even notice the two Jeeps.
I used Nick for support as we moved hurriedly through the park, across the street, and to the front yard of the house in which we were setting our trap.
Maybe I was just imagining things, but the house felt sinister. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. There was something evil in that house, something
that shouldn’t be there. I don’t know how else to describe it. The house didn’t want us to enter.
I think Nick felt it too. He came to an abrupt halt the second he stepped foot into the yard. Yeah, I’m positive he felt it. The house was a place of pain and death.
Then, we heard the muffled thumps of silenced automatic fire coming from inside.
I was the first one in despite my wounded leg. At first, I saw almost nothing. All the windows had been blackened out with a dark paint.
Then, I heard a vampire screaming.
I also heard Georgie screaming.
I was too late. Somehow, despite her injuries, the vampire had beaten me to the house. I hobbled in the direction of the scream and saw the shoved aside rug. I heard more silenced gunfire.
As soon as I approached the pit, the vampire leaped out. She was covered in bullet holes but her throat had closed once again. I watched as her face registered first shock at my being in her lair and then anger that I had discovered her hiding place.
I slammed my tomahawk straight down on the top of her head.
In response, she gave me an open handed slap that even though I managed to somewhat deflect with my arm, it still sent me sailing across the room. My arm was sprained from the blow, but fortunately I managed to not land on my bad leg.
“I’ll kill you,” she growled as she followed me across the room with my tomahawk jutting from her skull.
I responded by drilling her in the chest with my mp7. Then Nick appeared and opened fire as well. Dudley was slowly climbing out of the pit. He looked injured, but he also began to fire upon the vampire.
She twisted and turned under the storm of wooden bullets, but she still wouldn’t go down. Instead, she leapt to the ceiling and began to roll around on it as we pelted and pelted her. I’m not sure when Javie and Merrick arrived on the scene, but Javie began to shoot at the windows.
It took but a second to realize just how great of an idea he had, and I ordered Nick to join him.
“Which windows?” Nick asked as he avoided a clawed hand.
“All of them,” I answered.
The room was filled with smoke and dust from the bullets tearing up the walls and ceiling when a beam of sunlight finally entered the room and the screams of the vampire came to an abrupt stop. Then we heard the loud whack of a body hitting the tiled floor. It was hard to see through all the dust, and my eyes were beginning to water so I couldn’t make out where the vampire had fallen.
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