The Regulators - 02

by Michael Clary

  Once the Regulators were in front of all of us, I saw the General motion for everybody but his team to fall back. He didn’t want anyone close to the broken front doors. The crowd obeyed his wishes. All of us scrunched back towards the altar.

  “Guardian,” the voice said. “Come and talk to me. If you agree to my demands, I’ll let all of the innocents live. You have my word.”

  I saw the General turn and look at his nephew. Dudley shook his head furiously. I watched the General sigh heavily and walk through the broken front doors and out into the dark and frozen night. The dog wanted to go with him. It was Dudley that restrained her.

  I’m not sure that I like the General. I find him rather abrupt, rude and somewhat cold. However, I respect the man greatly. I regret that the people have a need for him, but I pray for him every single night.

  And I’ll tell you this as well: I believe in him. If I ever had a friend or a loved one in danger from some dark evil whether it was a zombie or a vampire or whatever ever else lurks in the night, I would want the General to be the one trying to save them.

  I believe in him that much.

  Chapter 9

  Jaxon

  My next meeting with Jaxon was a bit of a somber one as we discussed the events in the church. Despite the lack of options, it had been very difficult for him to accept the losses. In total, twenty seven-men and women had been killed by either vampires or zombies. The wounded numbered at forty-three with varying degrees of damage, none of which were life threatening.

  “Father Monarez told me about the voice that stopped all the fighting. Was it the Master vampire?”

  Of course.

  “What did he say to you when you went outside the church?”

  He said he wanted to fight me. If I didn’t agree to fight him, he was going to continue the attack until everyone was dead. He also informed me he was holding Hardin, Miriam, Ivana and a bunch of other behind-the-scenes-type folks hostage.

  “Did you agree to fight him?”

  Yes, I did. He wasn’t giving me much of a choice. It wasn’t exactly a fight that I wanted. I wanted to kill him, of course and I would have done my best to do it even, but I certainly didn’t want to fight him on his terms. That sounded a lot like suicide. I would have preferred to chase him down with some rocket launchers and flame throwers.

  “Where was the fight supposed to take place?”

  The fight was to be held in the Sun Bowl the following evening. None of the remaining survivors were allowed to leave the church. All of them were commanded to stay put until the human foot soldiers of the vampires came to collect them. They were to become the audience that would witness my death. After I or the Master was dead, everyone would be allowed to leave peacefully and Hardin, Miriam, Ivana and the others would be released.

  “What about your team?”

  My team was to leave the area at daybreak. The Master vampire did not want them in attendance because they may be tempted to help me.

  “You actually agreed to all of this?”

  I didn’t have much choice. We were losing. I was watching people die. The fight was too stacked against us. They all would have been killed.

  “Did you trust the vampire to keep his word?”

  Hell no, but by accepting him at his word, I borrowed us some time to plan. I mean, the boys weren’t exactly happy when I told them all the news. In fact, they were downright pissed at me. I didn’t give them a lot of time to yell at me though. There were wounded people that needed our help.

  I kept catching Dudley giving me dirty looks as we all cleaned up and bandaged the wounded. I knew he wanted to have a word with me. I just planned on avoiding it as long as possible. I also had people boarding up the front door and all the broken windows. The place was freezing cold.

  Finally, when everything had been cleaned up and all the wounded had been taken care of, Dudley came over to me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  “I just gave us the best chance of survival that we were going to get,” I answered. “The vampires were going to tear us all apart. Now we have time to plan.”

  “What do we need to plan?” Nick asked, having listened in on us. “Regardless of whether you win or lose he’s promised to release everyone.”

  “Do you actually believe that?” I asked.

  “If you don’t believe him,” Dudley asked, “why did you accept his deal?”

  “I accepted his deal to keep everyone from being torn apart,” I answered. “And no, I don’t believe him. I think he plans of killing everyone after I’m dead. That way, when the extraction helicopters show up, they will find nothing but a stadium filled with corpses. He will have sent a message to Hardin that vampires shouldn’t be fucked with, and he will also have saved face with the vampires following him.”

  “Why doesn’t he just kill Hardin if he’s worried about Hardin fucking with them in the future?” Nick asked.

  “If he kills Hardin,” I answered. “Hardin will just be replaced. He doesn’t want to deal with that, not when he can send Hardin a message that he won’t ever forget.”

  “That makes sense,” Dudley said. “If Hardin shows up to extract everyone and finds hundreds of corpses and a dead Guardian waiting for him, he’ll think twice about letting the next Guardian fight any vampires. Hell, he didn’t want Jax here to fight any vampires to begin with.”

  “He also won’t have any witnesses but Hardin and the crews in the helicopter,” I added.

  “So?” Nick asked.

  “So a vampire doesn’t want the world to know about vampires. If the world knew that vampires existed, can you imagine the witch hunts? Vampires are strong, but they can’t fight an entire population. No, win or lose nobody is going to make it out of the Sun Bowl alive.”

  “Alright,” Dudley said. “There’s a bloodbath coming. What’s the plan? And don’t you dare tell me that it involves you fighting a vampire.”

  “I need a needle and thread,” I answered. “Also, have any of you been to the Sun Bowl in the last few years? I’m not very familiar with it.”

  “I’m familiar with the Sun Bowl,” Nick answered. “I actually go to the games when I’m in town instead of getting drunk in the parking lot.”

  “Who was that shot aimed at?”

  Everyone.

  “Is the grass real or fake?” I asked Nick.

  “It’s fake grass, why?”

  “Just wondering,” I answered. “Wondering, wondering, wondering. Did anyone find me that needle and thread?”

  Georgie went off to go look for my needle and thread and the rest of us retired into the little priest’s office. I actually wanted to be alone, but the team wasn’t about to let that happen. They wanted to discuss ideas. I sat alone in the corner of the room with Merrick and let them talk amongst themselves while my mind went into overdrive.

  The situation sucked. The fight sucked. The deck was stacked against me. I knew that I could come up with a plan. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the plan wouldn’t be optimal. We simply didn’t have the weapons. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to bring anything to the fight but my knife.

  Then again, what weapons did I have that would prove even the slightest bit effectual against the vampires? The wooden bullets had a very limited effect against older vampires apparently. The cutting weapons did work, but you really had to hack the hell out of them. I just didn’t have anything in my arsenal that would make much of a difference when things went from bad to worse.

  I remember thinking that I needed a weapon that would cause massive amounts of damage to the vampires very quickly. I was stuck on that idea. It kept going over and over in my mind. It was annoying having the same thoughts circling around and around.

  “I hate running,” Nick said. “It makes me feel like Kingsley.”

  “Kingsley didn’t exactly run,” Dudley said. “He more or less mentally checked out and joined the other side.”

  “Well that’s even worse than
running,” Javie added.

  “I’m not leaving Jax,” Dudley said.

  I don’t know why I tuned into their conversation when I did. I really don’t, but the idea that had been bouncing around in my head suddenly slammed into the topic of their conversation and the result was beautiful with promise.

  “The topic of their conversation, do you mean Kingsley?”

  Yes, it was something Kingsley used when we escaped El Paso the first time. It’s something that I never forgot about and even though I wasn’t very practiced in its use, I kept a fair amount in my backpack just in case. I had forgotten it was even there, since it wasn’t something that I’d normally use.

  “I’ve got it,” I announced. “It’s not pretty, but it’s all we have.”

  I told everybody my plan. Dudley hated it. He didn’t like the idea of me fighting the Master. The odds of me surviving weren’t that great. I told him that it was necessary in order for my plan to work. The alternative would be me running away. If I did that, too many people would die and a few of those would be people we knew. He calmed down a bit, but he was still pissed.

  I can’t really say that I blamed him. The Master was faster than me. The Master was stronger than I was. I had no idea what on earth I was going to be able to do to him. The field wasn’t even real grass. At least if it was real grass I would be able to heal a bit because most natural things have that effect on me, but I didn’t even have that going for me.

  An idea occurred to me.

  The field had artificial grass, but I couldn’t help but think that vampires probably don’t spend a lot of time watching football. Therefore, he probably didn’t know what the field was made out of.

  I had another idea.

  I explained everything to my team as soon as Georgie came back with my needle and thread. Dudley was a bit happier, but happiness is relative. Nobody liked the idea of me fighting the Master.

  I wasn’t getting much in the way of confidence from my team. They were walking on eggshells around me as the night wore on. Actually treating me as if I were a condemned man instead of someone that had a chance of winning; it was hard to take. It’s not that I mind being the underdog, that’s not it at all. I’ve been the underdog many times before, but I’ve always known what everyone else didn’t; I knew I would win.

  This time, things were different.

  I didn’t actually believe that I could beat the vampire. I had a bad, bad feeling about the entire fight. I would try and hold out as long as possible in order to give everyone a chance, but in the end, well, things weren’t looking too good.

  I didn’t want to die, of course. I wanted to win. I wanted to kill the vampire, but the odds of that happening were slim to none. Still, I wasn’t going to give up. I knew that perfectly well. It wasn’t in my nature to quit. I would fight until I could no longer fight.

  It was going to hurt like hell.

  I didn’t spend much time on those thoughts, however. I didn’t allow myself. Instead, I thought of ways in which I could win. I thought of strikes that would cause damage to the vampire. I spent hours going over and over different scenarios.

  Everyone in the office was quiet until Javie found an old guitar and started strumming a tune. I caught what song it was almost immediately. It was one of my favorites. I was sick of moping and thinking so I went over and stood by him as he sat there plucking out the correct cords to the music.

  Before I knew it, he was even singing the song and I was joining in with him. None of us can sing, by the way, but that didn’t stop Georgie, Dudley and Nick from joining in as well. We weren’t quiet; we were loud and we got louder and louder.

  Nick, of course, was the one that started going overboard. He was slamming a chair up and down in time with the guitar. After the chair, he attacked a desk. Nick may have been the one making the ruckus, but it was Dudley that brought out the bottle of Jack. He’s carried one around ever since he discovered the Rat Pack.

  Anyway, once the alcohol started being passed around, things went from bad to worse. The place became a madhouse. The noise level was deafening. Others started joining the party and before long, the craziness had spilled out into the sanctuary.

  It was a good night.

  The music just kept coming. More alcohol was found and passed around. Everyone was singing. The little priest was playing tug of war with Merrick. People were clapping me on the back. They were sharing stories with me. They were asking me why I was so damn rude. Dudley did his famous drunken monkey dance. Everything was great. Nobody even once mentioned zombies or vampires.

  And then Father Monarez ruined everything.

  “What did he do?”

  He asked me if I wanted my last rites.

  “What did you tell him?”

  I didn’t tell him anything. I stormed off and went back into the office. This time, I only allowed Merrick to come with me. The priest tried to follow me, but Dudley headed him off and took care of things.

  After that, the party was over.

  I somehow managed to grab a bit of sleep in the office. I remember staring out the window with my head upon the desk. It had started to snow. That’s a pretty rare thing for El Paso. We’re normally lucky if it snows once or twice a year. I sat there watching the flakes fall lazily from the sky through the window. I remember thinking that it wasn’t a bad way to fall asleep.

  Once I woke up, the sun was rising in the sky and the team was packing up their gear. I went over some last minute instructions with them and pulled Dudley aside. I gave him my tomahawk. I wasn’t going to be needing it, or rather, I wasn’t allowed to bring it.

  He asked me about my wife. Something about a worst case scenario and he wanted to know what he should tell her. I didn’t really answer him. I just blew him off. I couldn’t allow myself to think along those lines.

  I was going to see my wife again. I was going to see that smile that I knew so well. I was going to hold her close to me. I would do everything in my power to make it back to her.

  I gave Merrick a big hug before she left. I ran my fingers through her short fur and just hugged her for all I was worth. In response, she gave a quick lick to my cheek. I walked her to the beat up station wagon the boys were piling into and watched them drive away.

  I spent the day in the office alone with my thoughts. Someone brought me food once, but I didn’t have an appetite. I didn’t want my last meal. I didn’t like feeling like a condemned man. I was getting angry.

  By mid-afternoon, the anger had turned into a black rage, and I could feel my upper lip begin to twitch involuntarily. I welcomed the rage. It took away all the negative thoughts. I let it wash over me. I wanted to shut down completely and become the machine that took on all those zombies at the bridge.

  Outside the windows of the office, it was still snowing heavily. The sight of snow against the window did nothing to change my mood. The beauty of it was lost on me. I merely sat and raged.

  I went from rage to straight out murderous an hour before sunset when Father Monarez knocked politely on the door and informed me that the foot soldiers of the vampires had arrived and were preparing to escort everyone to the Sun Bowl.

  A half an hour before sunset there was another knock on the office door. I didn’t answer it. I just sat there on the desk opening and closing my black folding knife. One wrong word and I was going to tear the intruder apart. The door opened slowly and I saw for the first time what the vampires must consider a foot soldier.

  He was a pale man with a broken spirit. I felt sorry for him immediately. It was hard to look at him. It was hard not to see the wicked wounds on his neck and wrists. I redirected my anger away from the innocent victim that couldn’t even look me in the eyes and I focused it back towards the vampire.

  We drove to the Sun Bowl in a decent enough car. The foot soldiers never said a word, not to me and not to each other, but I thought that I could hear one of them crying softly in the silence of the vehicle.

  When we arrived at the Sun B
owl, the sky was darkening and the snow was still falling. I was actually a bit shocked that it was still snowing. Like I mentioned before, it doesn’t snow much in El Paso. I would have enjoyed watching the snow fall for a bit, but I wasn’t given the opportunity. Once I exited the car, I was immediately led to a locker room.

  Once in the locker room, one of the foot soldiers quietly asked me to take off my vest and bite suit. I had a feeling that was coming so I didn’t freak out. I just put my utility belt and clothes on a table while all the foot soldiers meekly looked away.

  I had planned ahead for the event and instead of being left in nothing but my underwear; I had a black pair of shorts on underneath my pants. I was also allowed to keep my fingerless gloves for some reason and, with the exception of the large black folding knife in my left hand, I almost felt like a professional fighter preparing for his shot at the title.

  Except, I didn’t stretch or work up a sweat, I didn’t really do anything except sit on a wooden bench and fume.

  “Why do you think they wanted you in only your shorts?”

  Two reasons, I guess. First, the bite suit would offer some protection. Second, I think the vampire wanted the crowd to see the damage. Like I said earlier, it was going to hurt like hell. I had no delusions that I was going to go quick. He was going to be as cruel as he could possibly be.

  I avoided those thoughts as much as possible. They kept creeping back into my head, of course, but each time they did I shoved them away. I had a plan. It was a plan based on what I had learned from my other vampire encounters. I just had to stay alive long enough to enact my plan.

  An hour after sunset, I sensed a change in the foot soldiers. They began to act a little nervous and started fidgeting around. I knew from their actions that the vampires had arrived. It was only a matter of time.

  I did what I could to focus. I imagined myself winning the fight. It was hard to collect my thoughts, though, and I ended up just listening to the sound of my heart beating inside my chest. It was like a great engine filling my limbs with energy.