His oversight was about to cost him dearly. Javie turned on the water. The pipes on both sides of the field grumbled under the pressure, but they held. Large jets of water sprayed out of the hundreds of holes we drilled into the many pipes. The water jets shot high above the ground, met their cousins on the opposite side of the field in midair, and came crashing down upon the field with the falling snow.
We had created rain.
As the vampire crawled towards his foot soldiers in search of the healing blood, we had just given Jaxon a continuous dose of healing water. It was a beautiful thing to see. The black gore was rinsed from Jaxon’s body almost immediately. He was instantly soaked, and the water would continue to spray until I radioed Javie and asked him to turn it off.
Jaxon wasn’t moving.
I panicked. I broke free of my stupid snow igloo and stood straight up on the bleachers. I shouted for Jaxon to stand up. The vampire was getting closer and closer to his foot soldiers. They didn’t come to him, but they were too afraid to back away.
I saw Jaxon’s arm move.
It wasn’t a twitch or anything. His arm simply slid to his side and he used it along with his other arm to push himself to his knees. The water was pouring over both Jaxon and the vampire. I saw Jax wipe his eyes. I saw him look back at me and smile as he got to his feet.
The crowd of survivors began to roar and cheer.
I left my spot on the bleachers and entered the field. It was a stupid thing to do. I left my position, but I had to see the end.
When I was close enough, I saw the drenched vampire look over his shoulder. I saw his eyes go wide in fear as Jaxon slowly closed the distance. The blade of the Ti-light was gleaming in his hand. The crowd was still cheering. The foot soldiers were looking nervously from the Master to the General.
The vampire began to scream as he crawled. He began to plead for his life. Jaxon simply smiled. He was the monsters’ monster. Does that make any sense at all?
“He’s the thing that monsters fear?”
Exactly, he is the Guardian. He is the one man that can beat them at their own game, and do you know what the vampire’s worst mistake was? He thought he could go toe to toe with my uncle.
When I finally reached Jaxon, I realized that he was still in pretty bad shape. He was having trouble breathing. He didn’t seem able to keep his eyes open for long periods of time; he was hunched over awkwardly and walking funny. Still, I didn’t interfere. He wouldn’t have wanted that. This was his fight. It was his to end. I simply handed him his tomahawk.
“You can have this back,” I said. “It scares the hell out of me.”
He barely even looked at me as he took the weapon. The vampire screamed in fear, but after the first swing of the tomahawk, he began to scream in pain. Four swings later, the vampire screamed no more.
The Master was dead.
The survivors were cheering and clapping. They stormed the field despite the freezing water drenching their clothes. The mass of them stood before Jaxon and gave him the salute one final time. Unlike the other times however, Jaxon returned the salute, and then he collapsed.
“Dudley!” Nick shouted in my earpiece. “They’re here!”
I cursed myself for being an idiot and scanned the tops of the bleachers. Five vampires were perched and looking down upon us. They were on the same side of the stadium that the survivors watched the fight from.
I enacted part two of Jaxon’s plan. I pulled out my detonator and set off the semtex underneath the bleachers they were perched upon just as they rushed towards us. In case you’re wondering, my uncle got the idea from Kingsley when we first left El Paso and Kingsley and some other guy blew up that bridge. Ever since that day, Jaxon carried semtex in his backpack. He just never found a use for it until that day.
Jaxon predicted that the other vampires would only make an appearance at the end of the fight, and he was correct. They didn’t want any survivors, and they also weren’t about to pass up such a bountiful meal. He had also foreseen that the vampires would come at us from high altitudes, so when we weren’t helping Javie set up his makeshift watering system, we were rigging the tops of the bleachers to blow.
We didn’t actually have enough semtex to take out all the top bleachers, so we made a guess and rigged up each of the sides and left the ends of the stadium alone. Fortunately for us, we guessed correctly.
The explosion was loud, but it wasn’t big enough to take out the entire side of the stadium. It more or less just took out a few of the rows. Before the dust even cleared, Nick and Georgie had burst free from their respective mounds of snow and rushed to the debris field. I pulled free my machete and joined them at the top of the bleachers. The three of us hacked and chopped the damaged vampires.
It wasn’t exactly difficult. All but one of the vampires was too dazed to put up a fight. As for the vampire that was still alert, it was missing several vital pieces by the time we found him. It wasn’t much of a problem to relieve him of a few more.
The survivors cheered and cheered. Everyone was patting one another on the back. The water was still pouring down from above us. Jaxon was alert, but in obvious pain as his body knitted itself back together. Several people tried to approach him as he writhed about on the sodden fake grass, but he yelled at them to leave him be.
I sat quietly by him as he healed. I didn’t try and help him and I didn’t say a word. When it was over, Jaxon would once again become his usual charming self. I had no problems waiting.
Father Monarez went over to the foot soldiers and began to talk with them. I could occasionally pick up bits of the conversation. They were relieved to be free of the vampires. Everything was going wonderfully. Everyone was happy and safe. Each and every one of us had made a serious error. We had forgotten that the city wasn’t safe.
It was Javie that alerted me.
“Dudley!” Javie shouted in my earpiece. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“I’m right here,” I answered. “Come out and join us.”
“I’m on my way,” Javie said. “We need to get out of here fast.”
“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Can’t you hear them?”
I found that a rather odd question. It took a brief moment or two before things clicked together and I began to understand. We had made a hell of a lot of noise. First we had cheering, then we had an explosion and we followed all of that with a loud ass celebration.
“EVERYONE BE QUIET!” I shouted. “RIGHT NOW! STOP SCREAMING! STOP MAKING NOISE!”
It took just a few moments for everyone to quiet down. I craned my neck in an effort to hear if anything was approaching. At first I heard nothing, but that was just my ears playing tricks on me. As soon as I began to relax I heard them. Unfortunately, so did everyone else.
The zombies were coming.
Everyone began to panic. The Regulators gathered around Jaxon, just as Javie and Merrick burst through the entrance and came running towards us. Javie was carrying a large bag of makeshift weapons. They were the same weapons that the survivors had used in the church. We had taken all the ones that couldn’t be concealed underneath their clothes just in case we needed the survivors help in fighting the vampires.
“We gotta go,” Javie said. “There are a lot of them.”
I looked down at Jaxon. Merrick was standing over him protectively and he seemed to have lost consciousness. I knew that it would prove fatal if I removed him from the water. He was too fucked up, but I wasn’t about to abandon him.
“Listen up everybody,” I announced. “I need everyone to grab a weapon and make your way to the same exit. Stay together and be prepared to fight. The Regulators will hold them off as long as possible.”
“You aren’t coming with us?” someone asked.
“I can’t move Jaxon. He’s not healed up yet and if I take him from the water he probably won’t survive, but don’t worry about us. We’re the Regulators. This is our job.”
“Tonight we’re all Regulators!” someone shouted and everybody cheered.
“I will not abandon the man who risked his life to save all of ours,” Father Monarez said as he picked his chainsaw out of the bag of weapons.
In less than a second everyone was shouting different things at me.
“I won’t leave the General!”
“Let’s fight!”
“Protect the General!”
“I’m staying!”
“I won’t leave him behind!”
In the end, I lost total control. There was a large group of survivors trapped inside the Sun Bowl and not a single one of them would abandon my uncle. I began to pace back and forth as my adrenaline flowed into my veins. They wanted to fight. They probably wouldn’t make it very far if they chose to run. They wanted to fight.
“REGULATORS!” I shouted at the tops of my lungs. “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?”
“WE WANT TO FIGHT!” hundreds of voices screamed back at me.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?” I shouted again.
“FIGHT!” they answered in unison.
“WHAT?”
“FIGHT!” they screamed.
“REGULATORS!” I screamed a final time. “KILL ‘EM ALL!”
When the zombies came, they came by the hundreds. They poured through the different entrances of the Sun Bowl and charged us on the field.
I’m proud of each and every one of those people. They formed a protective circle around Jaxon and defended him. Not a single man, woman or child hesitated to put themselves in harm’s way. They fought and fought and fought.
The battle was brutal. The ammo ran out all too quickly, and the team quickly resorted to blades. Not a single shambler broke through our protective circle. Not a single person abandoned the man that fought so hard to protect them. They fought with everything they had. They protected my uncle.
We lost a lot of people in the opening moments of the attack, but still we fought on. A half an hour after the battle began, I heard a voice in my ear.
“Dudley,” Hardin asked. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I answered. “We could use some helicopters with some serious fire power.”
“I’m on my way,” Hardin said. “Where are you?”
“Inside the Sun Bowl,” I answered. “We also have about four hundred or so survivors that are ready for an extraction if you have enough of those choppers.”
“Wait a minute. How did Hardin escape the vampires? Where were Miriam, Ivana and the others that were being held as well?”
The vampires holding them left the area as soon as their Master was killed. I’m guessing that they somehow sensed his death and decided they didn’t want to stick around any longer. Anyway, Hardin is a pretty resourceful kind of guy. As soon as he realized that there were no longer any vampires around, he escaped rather easily.
It took another thirty minutes for the helicopters to show up. The sight of three choppers flying over the bleachers was an extremely welcome one, but I think we enjoyed it even more when the helicopters began to open fire on all the zombies.
In no time at all the stadium was relatively secure. More helicopters were brought in for extractions and by that time Jaxon was more or less himself, the Westside of El Paso had been cleared of survivors.
It was a battle that I will never forget as long as I live. In his one moment of need, it was the people that Jaxon fought so heroically to save that ended up saving him. It was a terrible battle, but the people supported one another. They stood side by side and faced the horde. In the midst of combat, I saw humanity, and let me tell ya, humanity is something worth fighting for.
In the end, eighty-four people lost their lives in the Battle of the Sun Bowl. The number was considered low considering the odds that the people faced.
“Were the Regulators the last ones to leave the stadium?”
Yes, we were.
“Where did you go after you were extracted?”
Extracted? Sweetheart, the Regulators never left El Paso. There were still survivors waiting for help in different parts of the city. We had a job to do, and dammit we were gonna get it done. Jaxon made a promise. He told the entire world that help was coming to those in need. We weren’t about to leave until we made good on that promise.
“So you planned on leaving after all the survivors in the city had been extracted?”
I wouldn’t say that. Even after all the survivors were extracted, there would still be zombies in our city.
“Then you planned on completely eliminating the undead threat?”
You got that right, and if you thought vampires were pretty wild, wait until you hear that story.
Epilogue
Jaxon
I had honestly thought that the tale had been told. I had just sent off my collection of interviews to my publisher when I happened to catch the news. Georgie’s ex-wife had been murdered in her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Two weeks later, the book was well on its way to being printed when I learned about some sort of fight in Las Vegas, Nevada involving the Regulators. I thought and thought about it, and I finally called my publisher and told her that I didn’t believe the story was finished. I needed one last interview to be sure.
My publisher agreed immediately, and I began the process of arranging one final interview with Jaxon in regards to the story published in this novel.
He smiled when he walked into the room, but he definitely had a wary look in his eye.
What brings you to my door this time?
“I was wondering if you could tell me about Lucy’s murder.”
I had a feeling you were going to ask about that. The minute they told me you wanted another interview. Man, you move fast when you need to, don’t you?
“It was a hunch that I had. I was thinking that there might be a connection between Lucy’s murder and what happened in Vegas.”
There is, and I can tell you about it because I went ahead and asked permission from Georgie. I felt that that was only right considering that it was his ex that was murdered. Anyway, he gave me permission. He thought it might be a good idea to let everyone know what happens when someone messes with our families.
It was Hardin that called me. I was actually on a different assignment when I got the call. He said that Lucy had been murdered the previous evening and her body had just been discovered. How he found out so quickly I have no idea. Hardin just seems to be a wealth of information, but I bet he probably keeps tabs on everyone’s family just in case.
The team was in Santa Fe in less than three hours. We actually landed the helicopter right on the street outside Lucy’s house. The police were everywhere, but I used my badge to get by everyone. Georgie wanted to come, but I wouldn’t allow him to leave the helicopter. He was taking things pretty badly, and I can’t say I blamed him. Fortunately, his daughter wasn’t with Lucy at the time. She had been visiting with Georgie’s parents.
As soon as I walked into the overly clean house I smelled the scent of blood and something else. I went past all the cops and all the crime scene investigators straight up to the upstairs bedroom.
Some rookie cop tried to stand in my way and I sent him tumbling down the stairs. After that, everyone kept their distance. The room was a mess. The nightstand had been overturned. A lamp had been broken. The sheets on the bed had been ripped to shreds. The thin metal shutters over one window had been bent and torn. The carpets and walls were smeared with blood.
At some point she must have tried to make a run for it. There were bloody footprints leading from the bed to the master bathroom. I followed the footprints and there I found Lucy’s body. She was partially in the bathtub, but most of her was dangling over the edge of the tub onto the cold tile floor.
The body had been savaged. Worse than that, he took his time with her. He gave her little tastes of pain as he built up for the final strike. There probably wasn’t much blood left in her body when he drank her dry.
Immediately I radioed in
to Hardin.
“Is this as bad as I think it is?” Hardin asked.
“Probably worse,” I answered. “Where’s my wife?”
“She’s still in Ruidoso doing some shopping. I can have her picked up immediately and moved to a safe location.”
“No, I’ll pick her up myself.”
I clicked off with Hardin and dashed down the stairs just in time to grab a hold of Georgie as he tried to force his way into the house. There was no way I was going to let him see the body. He’d never get that image out of his head.
I told him I was sorry. I told him that he couldn’t go inside. He didn’t take it very well. He even put up a pretty decent fight, but in the end I passed him off to Nick. He sort of looks up to Nick in a weird “don’t beat me up” kind of way.
The helicopter took off and we left a bunch of cops scratching their heads. We even managed to get out of there before the reporters showed up.
The helicopter landed at the airport outside of Ruidoso. I wasn’t in a particular hurry. It was only mid-afternoon. I found Skie in one of the shops located on Ruidoso’s main strip. She gave me her big smile and jumped into my arms.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why are you back so soon and why are you still in your uniform?”
I kissed her twice just because she was safe and sound and then I gathered up my parents and her kids and off we all went to Vegas. Of course she was terrified when I told her what had happened, but she put on her brave face almost immediately.
“Would he really hurt me?” she asked. “I’ve never done anything to him. I’ve always treated him like family.”
“Well, Lucy never did anything to him either and look what he did to her,” said Javie from across the helicopter.”
“Are you positive it was him though?” she asked.
“I saw black drool marks on the floor,” I answered. “There was a bite wound on her neck. It had to be him. That’s why you’re going to our predetermined safe location.”
The entire team has safe location areas all over the country just in case some big nasty wants to get revenge and take out a family member. My safe location area happens to be in Vegas. I chose Vegas because both my parents and Skie love going to Vegas. They have two penthouses reserved at the Luxor.
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