by Rob Horner
There was the nice benefit of not getting shot though…
By the time we arrived at our third location, the 2nd Precinct on Virginia Beach Boulevard only a few blocks from the waterfront, afternoon was waning into evening. It wasn’t dark yet and wouldn’t be for at least another hour, but the west-riding sun cast long shadows on the very modern building, white walls with a blue roof, that waited for us on a corner lot.
Finding it deserted was a pleasant, and terrifying, surprise.
“Fish, keep all eyes on the exterior!” Iz warned. “2nd Precinct is deserted. They’re either coming for Mandatum—”
“Or they’re massing at police headquarters,” Fish finished for him. “By the way, Joi Chen and the Griffin brothers, Marcus and Mitchel, send their thanks for rescuing them.”
“Who?” Iz asked.
“The trio Johnny and Jeff bagged earlier,” Fish said. “I’ve already given them the brief history and they want in.”
“Chen?” Jason whispered, appearing next to me. “Is she Asian, or one of those crazy white people with an Asian name?”
“She’s Asian,” I confirmed.
“She pretty?”
I described her to him, using my impression from earlier in the day rather than the one from my dream. “But she’s also a little older than you.”
He responded by pretending to pat down his straight, black hair. “Age brings wisdom in a woman,” he said.
“And skills,” Chris added. “Don’t forget skills.”
The two walked back to the waiting vans.
“Iz, we’re all quiet up here. Billy returned after finally dropping off the fourth group. He and Eddie are getting ready to head back out. They’ve all got Port-Comms this time, so we’ll know if anything goes wrong. I think you should be prepared for something big at police HQ.”
Iz was nodding. “How’s Bradley?”
“All patched up and ready,” the young man’s voice said. “Send Jeff back for me.”
“Do it,” Iz said to Jeff, who immediately vanished in a flash of light. Then he asked, “Is Brian still on the Comm?”
“I’m here, Iz.”
“Tell me what we’re up against at HQ.”
So, Brian told us.
Chapter 20
What we’re up against
According to Brian there were approximately seven hundred officers and a hundred civilians in the Virginia Beach Police Department. Those officers weren’t all patrolmen, of course. There were detectives and canine cops, SWAT and bomb squad, a horse-mounted patrol unit that covered the boardwalk and the strip, as well as a motorcycle corps, a helicopter crew, and a marine patrol unit which supplemented the Coast Guard. Some officers spent their days as crisis negotiators, crash investigators, or served in the community as special liaisons.
No matter what they did to earn their paycheck, each one went through the same training, maintained the same basic certifications, and was ready, at a moment’s notice, to strap on, form up, and work together to accomplish an objective. Brian reported we’d only captured sixty officers so far. Sixty-one, if you counted him.
Fish cautioned that Brian’s numbers could be taken as a worst-case scenario or as a bare minimum.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brian asked.
“The Dra’Gal don’t care about a host’s occupation, or any other aspect of their lives,” the Quin replied. “As soon as they’ve taken control, they move to fulfill the wishes of the Alpha. Many of the seven hundred officers might no longer wear a uniform, having been sent off to serve in other roles.”
“Okay,” Iz said. “I can understand that. So, what did you mean about it being a bare minimum?”
“It could easily go the other way, Iz,” Fish replied patiently. “Dra’Gal who weren’t part of the police force initially might be there now.”
“Some of them could have fought back,” Brian added softly.
I didn’t like the sound of pain in his voice. Anyone who fought against the Dra’Gal would have been killed if they couldn’t be converted.
“While it’s bad to think of your fellow officers dying like that,” Iz said, “it’s worse to think of five or six hundred of them waiting for us at their headquarters.”
“Let us help,” a new voice said.
“Who’s that?” Iz asked.
“My name’s Mitchel, sir. My brother and I…we…you brought us in today.”
“You saved us,” another voice said, a shade deeper in timbre.
“We want to help,” Mitchel continued. “We didn’t need Fish to explain things. We saw them. They—"
“They took control of us. Now we want to fight back.”
“Well if they’re coming,” a woman’s voice joined in, “so am I.”
Beside me, Jason smiled.
Our caravan moved out, heading south on General Booth Boulevard from the 2nd precinct. We passed Dam Neck Road and London Bridge Road before turning right onto Nimmo Parkway. We stopped at a small shopping center, the vans parked side by side, while Jason ran ahead to scout.
“It’s clear to Holland Road,” he reported a minute later, “but we’ll have to walk from there.”
“Why?” Iz asked.
“From Holland all the way to the station on Princess Anne is nothing but cop cars. They have traffic rerouted around the station and barricades set up on every street leading to it.”
“How many cops?”
“Dunno. I stopped counting at a hundred, and those are outside the station. The parking lot’s full, if that means anything.”
“All right,” Iz said. “We’ll drive on to Holland and walk from there.”
“It’s only a couple of blocks,” Brian said, his voice loud and clear in our Port-Comms.
“You guys sit tight at Mandatum,” Jeff said. “I’ll come get you once we stop.”
There wasn’t much at the Holland Road crossing with Nimmo Parkway, but there didn’t need to be. Two parking spaces at the side of an Exxon gas station were more than enough for our needs. As our forces piled out of the vans, it struck me that we were going to be vastly outnumbered in the coming operation, especially when Iz announced, “Non-lethal rounds only.”
“Some of them are bound to Manifest,” Little Jack said.
“We still have to try to take them down without killing them,” Iz replied. “I don’t push this on every operation, but these are police we’re talking about. The more of them we save, the more we have working on our side, ready to help take the city back.”
“Even if your reasons are a little twisted,” Brian said, “I appreciate the sentiment.”
“We’re going to attract a lot of attention walking down the street,” Bart offered.
“What? You think someone’s gonna call the cops on us?” Chris asked.
If you looked at us, huddled behind a couple of black vans, we didn’t look like a group big enough to be a threat to several hundred police officers. We were thirteen people, only five armed.
A loud pop sounded behind one of the vans.
“You guys miss me?” a voice asked as Bradley appeared, leading a very shaken Joi Chen around the vehicles. A second later, Jason was at her side, babbling a welcome even as the young lady staggered to the left and vomited against the side of the convenience store. A moment later Jeff returned, and this time it was the weird twins who came out from behind the vans.
“That was—”
“Awesome!”
I figured Jeff would stay with us, but he disappeared one more time, returning with a young woman maybe a couple inches shorter than me and a few years older. She had an athletic build, with light brown hair, dark green eyes, and a smile on her face that instantly reminded me of Tanya. She was the woman sitting with Gina, James, and a few others at breakfast that morning.
“Aw hells yeah!” Chris shouted. “Caitlin’s here. Now the party can get started.”
Our baker’s dozen was now nineteen.
The twins joined hands as we started out,
and right away the glowing ball of energy sprang into being, growing larger with every heartbeat. It was white this time, instead of red, but otherwise just as intense and scary.
“Don’t spread out too far,” one of the twins said. “We aren’t sure how big we can make the shield, or if it starts to weaken the bigger it gets.”
The warning was for Bart and Danny, who shied away from the glowing ball, walking four or five feet out to each side. I remembered the sting of their force field, and couldn’t help bringing the power to my hands, in case I needed to push my way through again.
But then the light grew enough to touch me and…nothing. Like stepping from the shadows under a canopy and out into the sun, the light washed over me, including me. It didn’t bring a sense of peace or anything, nothing poetic like that. But it didn’t zap my skin or shrivel my…you know…so we’ll call it a win. As the light bubble grew to encompass our whole party, the reactions of those around me were similar. A drawing away followed by a stoic reserve to endure, an uncontrollable last-minute flinching, then quiet amazement.
The barrier moved with us, remaining centered on the boy-band twins, Marcus and Mitchel.
“Will this thing stop us from using our powers?” Gina asked.
“We don’t…really know,” one of the twins answered. “I’m Marcus, by the way.”
“And I’m Mitchel. You can tell us apart by the scar on my cheek.”
The new girl, Caitlin, leaned over to peer at both guys. The first one to speak, Marcus, lowered his eyes shyly. But Mitchel met her gaze directly, until she looked away. I heard her mutter, “Too damned cute—” as she let them move ahead of her.
A sudden gust blew in at us, and Jason appeared. “The light ball didn’t stop me leaving or coming back.”
Several streaks of light flashed, zipping across the street. “It doesn’t stop my knives, either,” Bradley said.
“Glad that’s answered then,” Iz grumbled. “Now look alive. We’re coming up on the parked cop cars. Could be an ambush.”
Jason snorted, “Not unless they set something up in the past five seconds. We’re clear all the way to the first barricade.”
As we walked up Nimmo Parkway, the first barricade came into view, two police cars on each side of the road, pointed nose to nose with only the median separating each pair. In the middle distance to our left, around the next corner and a block away, was the large, two-story brick building housing the police headquarters.
The first indication we were under attack came in the form of several loud pings, though they were oddly dulled, like an empty Coke bottle turned upside down and pushed into water. The loud cracks of high-powered rifles echoed across the distance a second later.
“Snipers!” Iz shouted.
“Don’t worry—” Marcus said.
“They can’t get through our bubble,” Mitchel finished.
They hadn’t even warned us. Despite all the evidence we were likely walking into a Dra’Gal nest, despite the aggressive tactics of our previous encounters with the police, I had held onto hope this force holed up in the headquarters would turn out to be normal. To think otherwise scared the hell out of me.
The numbers kept growing.
At first, I faced them in ones and twos. In the coliseum parking lot, Tanya, Crystal and I faced a dozen. When we tried to infiltrate the carnival, there were dozens, plural, and both girls were taken. At our last stand on the carnival midway, as the towering Alpha appeared, there were perhaps a hundred Dra’Gal manifested, screeching, ready to attack.
That was terrifying.
Now we were about to charge into a force several times stronger.
As we approached, the officers behind the patrol cars opened fire, a continuous barrage of bullets striking our protective bubble and ricocheting away.
Bradley pumped his arms, sending dagger after dagger at the policemen.
Gina moved to the front of the bubble, still within its protection, but barely. She waved to Angelica and Chris, who moved up behind her, matching their pace to hers. Their hands reached out to her back, and a wall of light formed in front of her, reaching high and stretching wide.
As quickly as it formed, it streaked away, reaching the barricade in seconds, shoving the cars a few feet back, which knocked a lot of the policemen out of cover.
Bradley’s knives continued to fly, now striking more accurately, eliciting screams of pain that bothered me more than I wanted to admit, because they came from human throats.
How could we know they were all compromised? Maybe there were still some regular guys just following orders. Who knows that they’d been told about us?
The shots coming straight at us stopped as the downed officers worked to regain their feet, but the intermittent pops from the left said the snipers were still at work, hoping for an opening.
Something clicked for me, a potential problem that, perhaps, I’d just found the answer to.
“Gina,” I yelled, “can you place a barrier on the left, protect me from the snipers?”
“Yeah. But why? The bubble works great.”
“It’s about opposites,” I said, my mind working furiously for the words to describe the revelation.
Joi stepped up with her hands out and up, like she was creating a diagonal between our position and somewhere in the air above the police officer. When she brought her hands down, a cascade of water twenty feet wide poured out of the air, like God flushed a toilet in the sky. The water crashed down with the roar of a waterfall, crushing the policemen to the ground.
“Get their guns, Jason,” Iz said.
“When the twins were…possessed,” I said, “their light was red. It hurt for me to try to get to them. Now they’re free, and the light is white.”
“So, we might not be able to get to the police?” Gina finished.
“Right,” I said.
She thought about it for a second, then said, “Okay, but I want to stretch it across Princess Anne Road as well, give you some cover from the next barricade.”
A sudden clatter sounded as Jason reappeared, dropping a half-dozen pistols in the street at our feet. “Sec, need to get some more,” he blurted, then disappeared again. When he returned a few seconds later, he was dripping wet, but had his hands full with more weapons.
“Water feels good on a hot day like today,” he commented.
Joi laughed and flashed him a smile.
A few steps farther brought the leading edge of our bubble almost to the roadblock.
“Putting the wall up now,” Gina said, and one of her barriers sprang into being, set to our left and stretching away from us.
“Making one more run,” Jason said, and he was gone.
“James,” Iz began, “as soon as Jason’s—”
“I’m back,” the tall Asian man said, depositing a few final 9mm pistols at our feet.
“Okay, turn off the waterworks and send them a stunner, James.”
As quickly as it had started, the water stopped falling.
“Thought you’d never ask,” James said, raising his hand in the direction of the soaked policemen.
A short, arcing blast of electricity shot out of his finger, striking somewhere in the middle of the downed men.
“Go, Johnny, do your thing!” Iz said, and I went, bursting out through the protective bubble, wincing every time a shot ricocheted off Gina’s wall. Her first push had created enough space between the cars that I didn’t need to clamber over them. In the space of a few heartbeats, I was among the men, sneakers soaking up cold water that made every step a squishy mess. The power came to my hands, making them glow like miniature spotlights, visible despite the light lancing sideways from the setting sun. I didn’t let it out though. No more going nova today.
Instead I moved from man to man, touching a hand here, a face there, until Angelica yelled, “You got them all!”
“Twins,” Iz yelled, “move up and get your bubble over them. Jeff, start evacuating them to Mandatum.”
; “I’ll try,” the older man said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Don’t know if it’ll work through this shield.”
“If not, we can move forward some,” Iz replied. “I don’t want to risk any of these guys getting turned again and coming at our backs.”
We followed Iz’s orders, setting up almost on top of the unconscious police officers. Jeff bent down, getting a hand each on two of them, and disappeared in a flash of light.
“Guess he can,” Bart commented.
“I just gotta say something,” the pretty Asian girl with the blond hair said. “You guys rock!”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Caitlin replied. “Just wait till we get to the building.”
Chapter 21
Assault on police headquarters
Jeff popped in and out over the course of the next few minutes, removing the downed officers two by two.
“You guys okay?” Iz asked the twins.
“Yeah,” Marcus—the one without a scar—answered.
“We can hold it for a while,” Mitchel added, “but we’ll let you know if we start getting tired.”
The next few minutes went by in a blur. We turned left onto Princess Anne Road, which put the headquarters a block ahead of us on the right. The sniper rounds now came in high from the front, while the shots from the cops hunkered down behind the next barricade struck a little lower. Ever pragmatic, Iz kept Jason running scout patrols, having him circle the block, checking to make sure there were no other Dra’gal sneaking around behind us.
“We’re seeing the back of the building,” Jason reported once as he rushed in. When he came back, he added, “There doesn’t appear to be a way in on this side.” And a third time, “There are about a hundred cops grouped up in front, like they expect us to come that way.” Finally, “If we turn right on James Madison and then left on Courthouse, we have to go through three more roadblocks before we get to the front of the building.”