by Ryder Stacy
He glanced up at the calendar on the wall, as he had a hundred times that day, hoping each time that it would somehow have moved back a week or two. But this time his eyes caught something at the tinted picture window that spread out along the whole front of the office. The Siberian night was black outside, a vast mosaic of stars. The city’s lights were all turned off at night, as there wasn’t a hell of juice to go around. But something was glowing right outside his window, dropping down into view even as he watched. Which was impossible, as he was on the twelfth floor of a fifteen-story building.
And it was, as far as Vladymyr could make out—a monster. Which set his chest to thumping like it had bombs going off inside. For hovering right outside the window, as if just standing there on the air was some kind of hideous fish-headed and finned creature.
Was he losing his mind? It just hovered there, glowing all over like it was dipped in fluorescent paint. Shaking, he reached inside his desk drawer and grabbed for the pistol sitting there. But even as he got his hand around it, the Fishman raised his arm, and the entire glass window shattered into a million pieces, falling straight down to the ground far below where it slashed and splintered the two guards standing there into red burgers that dripped onto the sidewalk.
Vladymyr rose, so terrified he could hardly aim the pistol. But he did somehow and fired wildly. The monster Fishman came gliding right in through the shattered window, and though some of the slugs bounced off of it with little sparks, the thing didn’t stop for a second. Even as the scientist backed up to the wall and fired the last two rounds, he saw that another fish-thing was dropping into view and floating in behind the first. What the hell was going on? He’d only had a nip of vodka at dinner, not like some nights. The pressure, the pressure had driven him mad. He laughed, “Just hallucinating; just—”
But as the figure suddenly landed, coming down right in front of him on the carpeting, it spoke to him, Vladymyr knew he wasn’t going mad! He should be so lucky!
This thing was real. He could smell it, a plastic, electrical smell like the one that came from his computer when they were heated up as well. And even as he wondered if he was about to have a heart attack, so great did the constriction feel in his chest, the creature spoke.
“Dr. Kasinkovsk?” Its voice sounded muffled, like it was coming through a steel plate.
“Ye—yes,” Vladymyr answered, not even thinking of lying so blasted was his brain by the visitor.
“Good,” the fishface said almost pleasantly, and suddenly Vladymyr could see that there were human eyes moving inside the thing, that it wasn’t a real fish head, but a helmet of some kind. The whole greenish blue covering of the creature was a suit, not monster flesh! It reached out and grabbed him with a clawlike grip with it’s webbed glove around his shoulder.
“Come with us. You are wanted,” the voice said. And without another word it slammed a similar fish-headed helmet down over his head so that oxygen under pressure started coming out right away.
It turned, dragging the hapless Red scientist across the floor. As much as he struggled, Vladymyr couldn’t budge free, the grip, although not breaking bones, was as firm as if it were cemented to him. The thing walked to the window, then suddenly just lifted up off the floor, this time taking Vladymyr along with it. And if he had been frightened before, it was nothing compared to when he found himself floating straight up into the air at about five hundred miles an hour.
The whole city grew quickly smaller below, turning into a model train set, then an ant colony, Vladymyr knew for sure he was going to have a heart attack.
And he wasn’t the only Soviet scientist treated to a visit by fishmen from space. All over the Soviet Union, scientists needed up in the Nazi space wheel were being dragged screaming out windows, being lifted up into one or another Nazi space tugs!
Fourteen
If life can turn into a nightmare, then every one of the Freefighter strike force locked up inside the steel-walled refrigerator room was having one. It was one thing to go out fighting, or be struck by a bolt of lightning while traversing the Rocky Mountains—or many other possible ways of croaking. But this—this was something else entirely. Without a chance of final pride, of a feeling that one had done something good in this final moment of life. No, this was sick, foul, without the slightest trace of anything good to take into the next life.
“Rockson, we can’t die like this, we just can’t,” Detroit Green kept mumbling over and over. Not in fear, just infinite disgust. Some of the newer men in the team were whimpering, though no one said anything. The whiz kids, Rockson saw, were taking it all in stride. But then deep inside, they, more than anyone else believed that the Doomsday Warrior was going to get them out of this. Even if he didn’t believe it himself.
But it wasn’t Rock who was able to make the first real dent in the Vampyres imprisoning net-armor, though every man continued to struggle furiously within their sticky cocoons—it was Chen.
His Ultra-Vibration, Breath-of-the-Dragon breathing, after five hours, allowed him to at last get his arm and hand free of the entanglement as he was able to slide it fractions of an inch at a time up the side of his body and into his jacket. Here he was able to reach and grab hold of a small but razor-sharp blade secreted inside a lining. He felt an actual shudder of relief course through his whole body as his fingers touched the metal. It meant they might have a chance.
Still Chen didn’t say a word to the others, on the chance that he wouldn’t pull it off in time—and it was possible that the Vampyre women were somehow listening in on them. Though he didn’t think that was the case, as they had no reason to worry. As far as the blood drinkers were concerned, all the men here were already dead meat, cans of fresh red tomato juice up on the shelf ready to drink at the next meal.
Chen slid the knife into the cocoon netting as far around to the side as possible, so if someone came in they wouldn’t see him slicing. The net stuff wasn’t just sticky—it was tough. Tough as bark, probably from some sort of mutated plant covering nearby. The Chinese martial arts master had to give the vampire women credit for having used their environment to the hilt. He had to slice back and forth and had cut an opening about three feet long from shoulder to hip.
Then the door suddenly opened and two of the Vampyres walked in. And they wasted no time but walked straight over to none other than Chen. Of course, it always had to be like that. Never a break.
“This is him—#6,” one of them said, grabbing the tag around his neck and looking at it.
“Let us out, let us out,” a few of the strike force began to howl. Rockson felt no animosity toward them. They were new, many of them. This was no way to die. But then the ball game wasn’t over until the fat lady moved her adenoids, or something like that. Rock never could get that ancient colloquialism straight.
“Type O, R7 negative. Queenie’s favorite flavor,” one of them smirked to the other. Their lips pulled back, revealing the long sharp teeth at the edges of their mouths. They were like animals, not even able to control their bestial reactions at the sheer thought of drinking his blood. Even Chen, who had stared down giant land-roving octopi, felt fear from these yellow-eyed she-mutants. There was something so cold about them, reptilian almost, without a trace of the warmth that lies in the eyes of mammals. How the hell hadn’t he seen that under the make-up?
“You’re going to be our Queen’s Sacrificial Blood Drink. Your blood will be shared with the gods,” one of them said standing just inches in front of Chen, looking at him through the multistrands of webbing.
As the other one reached down and started to insert a hypo through the fibers, presumably to drug him for easy transport and control, like a cow being shipped to a Beefsteak Charlie’s, when there had been such places.
“I’m honored,” Chen said, as he sent out a sharp exhale of breath to prepare his whole body. It was now or never. With every bit of strength in his master’s flesh he ripped his leg up, pulling it free from the sticky substance that covered
it. At the same time Chen slammed his arm out through the opening he had been able to cut. It was a tight squeeze, as both his right arm and leg pushed free, like antennas from a butterfly’s cocoon, sampling the air to see if it was time to come out yet.
Somehow, with incredible flexibility and skill, Chen was able to grab hold of the near Vampyre. He threw his arm around her neck while the martial arts expert’s leg snaked up and slammed around into the side of the second Vampyre, sending her and her hypo flying across the floor.
Some of the men started to cheer but Rock told them in an icy command to “Shut the fuck up.” or they might attract others.
The place went dead silent except for grunts of effort, as the life and death struggle continued before their eyes. With one arm Chen pulled the struggling and hissing Vampyre around so she was alongside him. She slammed her teeth into his arm and he let out with a muffled curse within the netting. He pulled his leg back, and holding her by the throat, slammed his knee up into the lower back. There was a sharp crunching sound like turkey bones being cracked, and when he pushed forward the she-creature dropped like a sack of potatoes, dead before she hit the ground.
But the second one was already getting up from the floor. The men around her, in their nets unable to move an inch, were frustrated beyond reason for they couldn’t do a fucking thing. And they watched with torn hearts for they knew that whatever happened in the next two or three seconds would determine the fate of every one of them.
Chen started trying to squeeze through the small opening but had only gotten halfway out when he saw the blood drinker coming at him. She was using the long hypo as a blade rushing at him like she was going to run it right through the center of his skull. Chen cursed in Chinese as he found himself stuck halfway in, halfway out of the nets, with one leg and one arm through the opening, but the rest of him still inside. Which was not exactly the best fighting position in the world to be in when facing a snarling vampire-mutant.
Still, he had trained all his life to fight with what he had, deal with each situation as it arose. That was what it was all about. He pulled back his arm and leg to get her suckered in closer to him. And it worked. Partially. For as she came charging in with the hypo, he threw the leg straight out again and caught her in mid-body. Still, she was fast like a cat, and managed to slam the needle right into the side of his calf as she started to spin out of the way.
But Chen was even faster. He pulled the leg a half-foot back and lashed out with a second kick before she could get out of range. If she ran from the room they were all dead. Even though she was retreating from it, the sheer power of the kick managed to connect at full extension. The blade of his kung fu shoe ripped right into her rib cage, slammed her with such force that she was picked up and thrown through the air perhaps five yards, where she crashed down to the cold steel floor.
He could see even from across the room that the she-thing wasn’t getting up. Not when black cold blood was rushing from her mouth like water from a fountain nymph. The kick had smashed her ribs in with such force that a whole bunch of bones had smashed upwards and speared the living heart. She wasn’t warning anyone.
Chen slid through the net’s opening, having to move slowly as everything stuck to him and kept seeming to try to pull him back inside. But at last he freed himself and, shutting the door so any passing Vampyre wouldn’t see, he quickly freed the others with the blade. Standing upright, having access to all sides of the nettings, it was easy to free them. And once each man was out he released the next. Within five minutes they were all standing around stretching their arms and legs madly in all directions as every part of them had fallen asleep from lack of blood, from being so cramped and tightly bunched together for hours.
“What now, Rock?” Rajat asked, as he rubbed his wrists hard and wore a big grin on his face. He had been sure the Doomsday Warrior was going to come up with something. And he had. Even if it had been just knowing to bring Chen along.
“It could be,” said Rock, “that these women have never seen weapons like ours. A bit of luck! Now we find McCaughlin, and get the hell out of here. We’ve already lost too many men and too much time.”
Rockson ripped out his .12 gauge shotpistol and headed toward the door. “Keep your weapons out at all times—and don’t move in groups of less than three. Unless they have something besides teeth and hypos and poison, we can get the hell out of here! These mutants aren’t real women! Show no mercy! I don’t want to lose any more of you. Now move, men, move!”
He tore across the room, stepping over the body of one of the Vampyre women, her rib cage clearly poking through her chest. And even as her own sickly black vampire lifeblood drained out of her into a pool around the twitching body, the lips pulled back and the fangs descended. Even in death, her body was all vampire.
Fifteen
As they hit the hall outside the refrigeration room, Rock could see they were in a long warehouse filled with silverware, pots and pans, all the accessories of a real diner—and more. Also visible was their vampire equipment—there were rows of hypo needles, tubes, cannisters to collect blood in. Rockson shuddered even as he saw the stuff. They’d take care of smashing that stuff later—it was the living that mattered now.
There was no one else in the warehouse and the strike force split into teams under command of each of the core Rock team members. Each headed toward the different doors of the place.
Rock took Argas and Collins, two of the combat men, and the two whiz kids. He wanted to keep his eye on them. After everything that had happened, they were still alive, which all things considered was close to a miracle. But miracles tended to come few and far between. And he didn’t want to lose the little spaceship experts, or the entire expedition was finito.
Rock threw open the main door of the place—and a large tin roof warehouse—and came out with shotpistol at chest level as the two combat men charged behind carrying their Liberator automatic .9mm subs. Thank god the Vampyres hadn’t stripped them of their weapons. Doubtless it was going to be a fatal oversight for the she-bitches!
Even as they emerged, two of the Vampyre women who were pushing a corpse along in a wheelbarrow stopped in their tracks, their faces grew demonic, fangs extending, eyes glowing deep yellow.
And there was something else about the Vampyres that Rock hadn’t noticed inside the dim refrigerator room—they had wings. Now the Vampyres unfurled them from behind their backs and came toward the humans like nightmare bats, skimming just yards above the ground. Their little ugly gray shriveled wings flapped wildly—not able to give them full flight, but sure as hell good for a few short quick hops.
Rock ripped his shotpistol up and let loose with two blasts and two blood drinkers went careening off sideways in opposite directions in a tangle of screams and blood and broken wings.
With that, the shit really hit the fan—and the Vampyres were shooting out from everywhere.
“Hit the exits, men,” Rock yelled. They did.
Outside there were six small tin-roofed wooden shacks spread out around the warehouse. A hundred yards to the left was U-ETE-HERE, the diner itself. Obviously it was the center of the entire trap-and-bleed operation, for from the diner’s every door the screaming, snarling women emerged within seconds of hearing the shots. But they sure as hell didn’t look like women when they all spread those wretched wings and came flying just yards above the ground from every direction. Still, their sheer ugliness made it easier to shoot them.
And suddenly the entire area was alive with an air-ground battle the likes of which had never been in human history, and likely never would again. The Vampyres were fast and tough and more than plentiful. But they were used to going up against small under-armed groups of travelers, not combat-hardened fighters equipped with the most modern automatic weapons. And so their dynasty came to a fast and bloody close after having consumed thousands of humans over the last seventy-five years.
The she-bats attacked the men thinking it would be child’s prey. A
nd their fierce demonic faces did make the men shudder. But that only made them spray out their loads of .9mm shells until their pistols and subs were empty, and then slam in another clip to take out more.
Everywhere around the encampment the vampire creatures were taking hits. Slugs tore through wings and clawed feet and they fell from the sky like ducks on a migration passing through the London Blitz.
Chen used his expertise at throwing exploding star-knives, knocking out two or three at a time in explosions that rocked the air with smoke and mutant flesh.
Archer started with his steel alloy crossbow, but it was too slow after the first arrow to reload the damned thing. And so he used it like he often did, swinging the huge thing around him like some immense club smashing two, three of them at a time right out of the air.
Rockson bee-lined for the diner with his own little team packed tightly behind him on full run. The whiz kids both packed their own .9mm’s which they seemed a little unsure of how to use. But they carried them at the ready. Everyone fought in America 2090 A.D., kids, too. As they ran across the field to the gleaming piece of Americana, Rock saw a whole stream of Vampyres surging out of the diner’s front door, and these had weapons.
They were screaming madly in a bizarre language of clicks and howls as they carried long ice-pick-like spears nearly four feet long which they flung from small handholds that they grabbed with their fists. A whole stack of the spears flew by Rock and he saw they were no joke. One suddenly dug right into the shoulder of Collins and he spun around and went down, already going into full paralysis. Christ, the spears were drugged as well.