Department 19: Battle Lines

by Hill, Will

  There was a long, pregnant silence. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound, until Larissa heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the door, a millisecond before it was kicked open.

  It slammed against the wall with a deafening crash as a stream of figures burst through the empty space, screaming and yelling and waving their hands above their heads, hands that were full of metal.

  “Freeze!” bellowed Tim Albertsson, rising up from behind the desk, his rifle locked against his shoulder. The rest of the squad rose as one, their weapons pointed at the mass of screaming humanity, which stopped dead at the sight of the black-clad figures before them.

  Standing inside the doorway were seven women in bikinis. The oldest appeared to be in her late twenties, and several appeared to be little more than teenagers. In their hands they carried an array of kitchen knives, machetes, and other sharp pieces of household metal; one girl was carrying a garden trowel.

  “Drop the weapons!” shouted Tim Albertsson. “Drop them now!”

  The women instantly threw what they were holding to the ground; the makeshift weapons clattered against the floorboards, one of the knives digging into the wood and vibrating. They wore expressions of fear and misery on their faces, and several of them clutched at their almost naked bodies, covering their chests and crotches to the best of their ability. At the front, a tall, dark-skinned woman stared at the black figures, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. She looked as though she was about to speak when her eyes flicked to the corner of the room and what lay there. Her hands flew to her mouth and she screamed through her fingers. She stumbled forward, until Rios yelled at her to stay still.

  “Bastardo!” she cried. “Asesino! Olivia, mi pobrecita, mi querida ángel…”

  Her voice trailed off in a paroxysm of sobbing.

  “Tim,” said Larissa, speaking through the comms link that only their squad mates could hear. “Get hold of this. This is going to get out of hand quickly.”

  Tim nodded, then turned his attention back to the women, all of whom were now in tears, trembling and shaking and pointing at the dead girl. “Ladies,” he said. “Identify yourselves.”

  The girl who had screamed stared at him with open loathing. “I am Eva,” she spat.

  “Eva,” said Tim. “Can I talk to you? Can we talk calmly?”

  “I do not talk with murderers,” said Eva. “With cowards.”

  “She attacked me,” said Frost, her voice low. “I was defending myself.”

  “With your gun and your helmet and your armour,” said Eva, looking at Frost with open contempt. “She had a piece of metal that wasn’t even sharp. How much of a threat was she to you?”

  “Eva, look at me,” said Tim. Behind her, the rest of the women were beginning to mutter in Spanish, and he was keen to try and neutralise the situation. If they attacked, his squad would be in no real danger. But he knew that not all of the women would survive if his team were forced to defend themselves; possibly none of them would.

  “Why are you here, Eva?” he asked. “Why are you all here, in this house?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “We cut,” she said, eventually.

  “Cut what?”

  “The product,” she said. “In the basement. We cut and wrap and parcel.”

  “Why are you dressed like that?” asked Larissa.

  One of the younger-looking girls spoke up. “So we not steal,” she said, her voice wavering. “They no trust us.”

  Jesus Christ, thought Larissa. How humiliating.

  “And because they like to look,” said Eva. “The men. They like to look.” Behind her, the rest of the women murmured their agreement.

  “Why are you up here on your own?” asked Tim. “Where is General Rejon?”

  “Downstairs,” replied Eva. “When the shooting start, he sent us up here. Told us to fight.”

  “Does he know who we are?” asked Tim. “Why we’re here?”

  Eva shook her head. “General thinks you are from other cartel.” She examined their uniforms. “But I am thinking not.”

  “So he sent you all up here with lumps of metal to fight with?” asked Larissa, her voice vibrating with fury. “Dressed in nothing? After he had heard with his own ears that whoever was up here had guns?”

  Eva shrugged. “It not matter if we die. There are eight of us cutters, seven now, after Olivia. We all die, tomorrow a hundred girls ask for jobs. If we say no, we will not fight, the General will kill us himself. So we fight.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Tim. “You take your friend’s body and you find some clothes and you get the hell out of here as quickly as you can. Do you understand me, Eva?”

  “What we tell General tomorrow?” asked one of the women, her face a mask of worry. “How we explain?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” said Tim. “Eva, you said General Rejon is downstairs?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s dumb,” said Flaherty, frowning. “There’s only one entrance to the lower level. Next door, in the library.”

  “The General will not run,” said Eva. “He told us he will not go back to prison. He will die first.”

  “Then let’s give him what he wants,” spat Larissa. “Why are we standing around up here when they’re down there?”

  “How many of them are downstairs?” asked Tim, shooting a glance full of warning at Larissa.

  “Eleven including the General.”

  “Are you telling me the truth, Eva?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s telling the truth, sir,” said Flaherty. “We just got overlook. Twelve humans and one vampire on this level, eleven vampires downstairs.”

  “Good,” said Tim. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, great,” said Larissa. “Pity we didn’t have that information before we killed an innocent girl.”

  “Larissa?” said Tim, softly.

  “What?”

  “Shut the hell up. That’s an order.”

  Larissa stared at her squad leader for a long moment.

  It’s not his fault, she told herself. Not anyone’s fault. Bad things happen. Bad things happen.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, without dropping her gaze.

  “Thank you,” said Tim, and returned his attention to Eva. “The General and his men. What weapons do they have?”

  “Knives,” said Eva. “And guns. Many, many guns.”

  The Special Operations Squad stood in General Rejon’s library, facing the door that would take them down to the building’s basement level. The room was dark, with a wooden floor and ceiling-height bookshelves covering three of the walls. The fourth was dominated by a vast picture window, which looked out over the sloping gardens and grounds towards the distant front gates, a view that would normally have been idyllic, but which was now dotted with patches of spilled blood, still visible in the last of the evening light.

  Eva had led the terrified, grief-stricken cutters out of the house, two of them carrying the body of the woman named Olivia between them. They had gone without a word, although Frost had been unable to meet any of their eyes as they departed; her face was pale and drawn.

  “Anna,” said Tim. “I want you guarding this door. Anything comes up the stairs that isn’t one of us, kill it.”

  “I’m fine, sir,” she said. “You don’t need to leave me up here.”

  “I know,” replied Tim. “But I need this door covered and I want you to do it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Frost. Her face wore an expression of abject misery.

  “The rest of us are going down there,” said Tim, nodding towards the door. “There are eleven vampires waiting for us, none of whom the world is going to miss. I want visors down and weapons ready. Let’s get this done and go home. José, you’re on point.”

  Rios nodded and walked across to the door; he kicked it open and leapt backwards, creating separation between himself and the empty space. The satellite imagery indicated that all eleven of the
vampires were in one place, a long room in the centre of the basement, but it was impossible to be too careful when you were dealing with vampires.

  “Clear,” said Rios. He stepped through the door and started down the stairs towards the basement. Larissa watched as Flaherty and Rushton followed him, her stomach churning with boiling acid, her eyes burning with a heat she had never felt before.

  She was angrier than she had ever been in her life.

  The opulence of the house and its grounds, the art and the cars and the fine decorations, were an insult to the overwhelming majority of human beings, the men and women who scraped by and tried to live decent lives. The house was a palace built on death and misery, on the expendability of men and women like Olivia, who had attacked a soldier wearing only a bikini and carrying a dull machete because her employer had promised to kill her if she didn’t.

  All their money and their guns aren’t going to help them now, she thought, her mind so flooded with the bittersweet desire to commit violence that she could barely form the words.

  Nothing can help them now.

  They went silently, taking the stairs one at a time, and emerged into a wood-panelled corridor.

  The long wall to their left was covered in framed posters of old Hollywood films: Tarzan, The Adventures of Robin Hood, King Kong, The Magnificent Seven. To their right, the wall was covered with black and white photographs of film stars, politicians, musicians and models. A handsome man sporting a thick moustache and wearing military uniform smiled out from the middle of every frame; the man who was no longer a man, the vampire the Special Operations Squad was there to destroy.

  “Flaherty,” said Tim, across their comms network. “Do we still have overlook?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Talk us through the layout of this level.”

  “One room to our left,” said Flaherty, pointing at a door set in between two of the posters. “To the right, there’s one large room on the other side of this wall. Small rooms along the edges, but the central space is open. The vamps are gathered at the far end.”

  “OK,” said Tim. “Stay on it. Let me know if they move.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Flaherty.

  The squad leader raised his hand and pointed at the door set into the left-hand wall. Rios and Rushton moved silently along the corridor until they were standing either side of it. Tim and Flaherty moved up behind them, their T-Bones raised to their shoulders, Larissa watching their backs. There was a moment of silence before Rios reached down, gripped the handle, and threw the door open. Tim led them in, Flaherty behind him, Rios, Rushton and Larissa bringing up the rear.

  The room was long and wide, full of metal benches beside which stood a number of stools. On the bench tops sat plastic tubs full of white powder, along with metal spoons, wooden sticks, and a pair of ancient-looking scales. A set of shelves contained rows of rectangular parcels, wrapped in brown paper and layers of clear plastic. A digital radio was plugged into a wall socket in the corner, the single concession to levity in this severe, businesslike room.

  “This is where those women worked,” said Larissa. “The cutters.”

  Tim nodded. “Set a UV grenade on that bench,” he said. “Motion sensitive. I don’t want any surprises down here.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Larissa. She pulled a UV grenade from her belt, placed it in the middle of one of the piles of powder, and twisted its dial three clicks to the right; it began to flash steadily as the squad made their exit. Larissa cast a final glance into the room as she pulled the door closed and felt the fury in her chest, hot and sharp and comforting.

  Time’s almost up, General, she thought. I’m going to carve Olivia’s name into your heart before I crush it with my bare hands.

  They regrouped in the corridor, their weapons raised.

  “Overlook?” asked Tim.

  “No change,” said Flaherty.

  “OK. Once we go round this wall, is there anything between us and them?”

  “Structural pillars,” said Flaherty. “Furniture. Tables and sofas by the look of it.”

  “All right. I want an even spacing as we move up. Once we engage, Jill and Larissa break right, Pete and José to the left with me. Clear?”

  Rushton and Rios nodded.

  “Let’s do this quick and clean,” said Tim. “Remember that these are not the same vampires we’re used to dealing with; they’re stronger, and faster, and most of them have military experience. Get them in your sights and put them down. Don’t let yourself get cut off, and fall back if you find yourself in a changing situation. This is no time for heroics. Are you listening to me, Larissa?”

  She grunted and nodded her head. Fire was coursing through her veins, demanding violence, urging her to spill blood and tear flesh.

  “All right then,” said Tim. “Let’s move out.”

  Larissa followed her squad mates round the corner at the end of the wooden corridor, bracing herself for the rattle of gunfire, her MP5 resting easily in her hands.

  Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

  The room they found themselves at the edge of was long and wide, as Flaherty had suggested; wood panelling covered the walls, polished floorboards the ground. Pillars that presumably held the basement ceiling up stood at wide intervals, with tables, sofas and chairs arranged between them. All the surfaces had a dull dusting of white powder; beer bottles and wine glasses were everywhere, beside ashtrays overflowing with the discarded ends of cigarettes and cigars. The smell of tobacco and whisky mingled in the air with something acidic, something that smelt almost like petrol. At the far end of the room, where Flaherty had told them General Rejon and his soldiers would be waiting for them, there was a long wooden bar full of glass bottles, and a semicircle of empty sofas facing a huge wall-screen TV. A small fridge stood on top of the bar, which Larissa was willing to bet was full of blood.

  “What the hell?” asked Tim. “Flaherty?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” she replied. “The satellite’s showing eleven subterranean vampire heat signatures. They should be right in front of us.”

  “Can you see any vamps?” asked Tim. “Because I can’t.”

  “No, sir,” replied Flaherty. Her tone was ice-cold.

  “Good,” said Tim. “I’m glad it’s not just me. Move up.”

  The Special Operations Squad stepped silently into the wide-open area at the end of the room. A large rug covered much of the floor, woven with an intricate pattern of loops and zigzag stripes. On the wooden surface of the bar, three glasses sat half full of clear liquid, beads of condensation rolling slowly down their sides. Smoke rose lazily from an ashtray, the crushed remnants of a cigar still glowing inside it.

  “They were here,” said Larissa. “Recently.”

  Tim pushed back his visor and glared at her. “That’s helpful,” he said, colour rising in his cheeks. “Do you have any other observations?”

  Larissa didn’t reply; she merely lifted her visor and fixed the squad leader with a long, flat stare. After a second or two, he looked away.

  “All right,” said Flaherty, pushing back her own visor. “Let’s just try to—”

  The deafening clatter of automatic gunfire filled the air, thundering against the wooden walls and crashing into the Operators’ ears. The wide rug bucked and twisted as a hail of bullets pounded through it, filling the air with flying pieces of hot, deadly lead. One slammed against the side of Larissa’s helmet, sending her stumbling backwards as her squad mates dived for cover. She shoved her visor down, feeling her fangs sliding down from her gums, her eyes filling with blazing heat.

  “Back against the walls,” yelled Tim.

  Larissa flung herself up into the air, the smell of gunpowder threatening to overwhelm her, then swooped forward, ignoring Tim’s order completely. She skimmed the ground, moving at dizzying speed, and dragged the rug up and away. Beneath it, now almost obliterated by gunfire, was a wide trapdoor.

  “They’re under the floor,
” she yelled, her voice booming directly into the ears of her squad mates. She spun upwards, hovering in the thick, smoky air, and threw the rug aside. Then she drew her MP5 from her belt and emptied the submachine gun into what was left of the wooden floor. The rest of the squad followed suit; the gunfire howled and bellowed for what felt like an eternity, then stopped, leaving only silence in the acrid, smoke-filled room.

  “Hello, my friends,” shouted a deep, distant voice. “I am General Garcia Rejon, and you are most welcome in my home. Why don’t you come down here and introduce yourselves?”

  Larissa growled, the noise rumbling up through her throat. “Why the hell didn’t we know there was a sub-basement down here?” she asked.

  “It’s not on the plans,” said Flaherty. “I’m sorry.”

  “I can see you, my friends,” shouted General Rejon. “But I cannot hear you. Don’t you want to talk to me? Is that not why you are here?”

  Tim twisted the dial on his belt. “I’ll talk to you, General,” he said, his voice echoing through the basement. “What do you want to talk about?” As he spoke, he pulled a pair of UV grenades from his belt.

  “How about trespassing?” shouted General Rejon. “Or unlawful entry? Or murder?”

  “You want to talk about murder?” asked Tim. “Fine. Let’s talk about that.”

  He crouched down and pitched the two UV grenades towards the trapdoor; they rattled across the uneven, shattered surface, then dropped out of sight. There was a moment of absolute stillness, before the grenades exploded in a silent, blinding burst of purple light that blazed up through hundreds of jagged bullet holes.

  A chorus of deafening agony immediately filled the air, as the basement floor erupted upwards in an explosion of flying wood and burning, screaming vampires. The purple light died away and a smile burst across Larissa’s face as she threw herself into the battle.