And Roterie wanted to savor his rise to power.
***
Strajowskie’s arms almost buckled as he hauled himself out of the trench yet again. His hair was matted to his forehead, still sopping wet from the day’s humidity and heat, from physical exertion. He was but a drone, an airplane set to auto-pilot. Parry, parry, strike, strike, strike, stop. Wait for the shout, retreat, take a breather, jump out, repeat.
A figure approached. He stabbed out with his machete and his foe slumped, impaled by the blade. Cannopolis shouted. Strajowskie turned and prepared to hop into the trench. He wouldn’t be able to hop much longer. The tightly packed dirt hole was jolting his knees, and his joints were on fire.
He flexed his muscles to spring forward, and then cursed. He was shaking so much from exhaustion that even his vision was skewed.
No, his body wasn’t shaking.
It was being shaken.
He turned around. Even with blurred vision there was no mistaking the shapes heading his way. There, trudging around the bend from Eisenhower Street, was a large group—thousands—of the ugly stretching beasts. Leading them was the strangest and shortest one he’d yet seen. It flung its own brothers into the air without regard. It glowed like embers, and red electricity flared around its silhouette.
Strajowskie peered across the trench to the cannon. He made a whirligig motion with his right hand, hoping they’d get the hint. Two of his soldiers burst out of the trench and ran past him. Metal clanged; Undead hissed; humans grunted. Strajowskie had left his backside exposed for far too long and almost paid the price.
Shouts rang out from the trio stationed at the cannon. Hands cupped to mouths in a futile attempt to project garbled phrases. Their actions were hurried. Frantic.
Keith ran to the barrel of the cannon and pointed with his bionic arm. He then made a motion with his hands as if stuffing a turkey. Strajowskie glanced back over his shoulder.
The herd of beasts was closing the distance.
He yanked on the collars of the two brave privates guarding his rear and dove into the trench.
***
Hammers could see it, there on the crest of the hill within the passage. The bulky shape would not deter him, though. He cared not what it was—whether it was a human brigade or a tank or just his imagination. It wouldn’t remain stationary for long. The pass would fall. The western half of the country would belong to them.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of Undead would be slain by their battlefield leader, and their political leader in Haven wouldn’t be the wiser.
He glanced right, down Rucker Road. It was overrun with Undead, all the way to the foot of the bluffs. Not a human in sight, but the front line was thick with vampires. Too thick.
A vampire crashed into his chest and stumbled to the ground, eyes wide. Hammers grinned. He reached down and gripped the bewildered Undead by its shoulders. Once it was eye-level, he shouted, “Aren’t you running the wrong way?”
A deafening explosion rocked the tight passage, drowning out the Undead private’s stammered response. Hammers shook his head in disgust. The private’s response didn’t matter anyway. He was running from the battlefield.
“Fucking pussy,” Hammers muttered. He tossed the Undead up, and held his arm straight up in the air. The private’s chest connected. Cold liquid glided down Hammers’ forearm in tiny rivulets. With a smirk, he brought his hand back down to his side. He didn’t spare the impaled Undead a glance as it slid off his arm.
There was a raucous ahead. Undead rallied, pressing into the pass.
Hammers moved on, tossing his own men aside like leaves in the wind, anxious to continue his bloodbath.
***
Roterie flattened his back against the bluff wall, cross-stepping toward the pass. He had just witnessed Hammers impale one of their own, seconds after the cannon fired.
What was Hammers trying to prove? Hadn’t he listened to Roterie’s report regarding the pass?
Did the general not know a cannon was stationed there?
Again, Roterie smiled and shook his wild black head of hair like a dog drying itself after a swim in a creek. He crept ever closer, sticking to the deepening shadows.
***
“Come on, come on,” Strajowskie grumbled. He hacked down yet another Undead. Two more stepped up to fill the void. It was as he’d feared: The pass was becoming overcrowded. It wouldn’t hold much longer.
He would’ve counted the seconds if time hadn’t seemed to come to a standstill. The loading of Drake’s hopeful invention was taking much longer than anticipated. Of course, there was no guarantee it would work.
And if it didn’t then they’d all be fucked.
Strajowskie chopped off the heads of the two nearest Undead. Then all the other vampires rushing in to meet him were suddenly airborne, screaming as much from fear as from surprise before crashing into the bluff walls.
The red-glowing short beast stepped face-to-face with Strajowskie. Or rather chest-to-face. A rather familiar chest bearing a familiar symbol.
Strajowskie looked up in awe. A smirking, blood-and-ash covered Hammers glared down at him. Red bolts skirted all over his body.
“Down!”
Strajowskie hesitated. He wanted to tell Hammers to move. It wasn’t right. He should warn him, save him from inevitable death.
Hatred contorted the Undead general’s face. His eyes were wild, red, spitting electricity.
Words would be useless.
Strajowskie dropped face-first to the ground.
***
He was bowing? The crazy, decrepit old bastard was bowing to him like a subservient coward?
Hammers guffawed. He never thought he would get much joy from killing Strajowskie, but the sudden idea set his non-beating heart atwitter.
A loud bang—louder than the last—echoed through the pass.
Something hit his chest. Hard.
The ground rumbled beneath him, then stopped. A bunch of soft sounds echoed in rapid succession: Shuck, shuck, shuck. Shuck, shuck, shuck. Hammers wheeled around. Jackals stood elbow to elbow inside the pass. They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. They looked cracked. Fake.
Hammers realized then that his body was no longer glowing.
He looked down and gasped.
Then he fell onto his nose.
Chapter 42
Strajowskie stumbled back to his feet. He could hear nothing but a steady ringing. Dazed, he scanned the battlefield. The beasts remained rooted in place, blank expressions plastered to their faces. Across the trench, Drake and Keith stood beside the cannon, hands over their ears. Cannopolis did likewise from his wheelchair. The soldiers inside the trench hadn’t even scrambled out. They appeared as disoriented as everyone else.
A light gust of wind flitted through the pass then. It cooled the sweat that caked him from head to foot. Rustling—like autumn leaves—drew his attention back to the immobile beasts.
They crumbled, turning into ash and wafting away on the breeze.
Drake’s creation had been more effective than expected. Like a giant shotgun shell, the modified trunk had shot out, then exploded, releasing the hundreds of crude wooden spikes nestled inside the wooden cartridge, obliterating everything in sight.
Cheers erupted from the trench and beyond. Strajowskie ignored the hoots and hollers, his mind still whirling.
The pass was clear, illuminated only by moonlight. Funnels of ashes swirled like miniature cyclones. Nothing else stirred.
Except for the lone, jerking figure lying against the broken asphalt yards from Strajowskie’s feet.
Hammers. He could’ve warned him, but he’d opted to leave the Undead general in the hands of Fate. Strajowskie scrambled forward. His lip trembled. He stood above the spasmodic bulky vampire. The general had taken the brunt of the ragged tree trunk and a hole had been ripped through his midsection. Grey matter hung around the burnt edges of the wound. Dark liquid oozed.
Strajowskie dropped to one knee next to the
Undead general, his back to the vampire masses. He placed a hand on the hulk’s seizing shoulder-blades. Too much trauma, even for a vampire. There was no way he could survive.
Soldiers filtered out of the trench, rushing into their usual formations. Strajowskie shouted at them to stay back, his voice wavering. He rolled Hammers’ body over. The general was covered in mud. Strajowskie gripped his own sleeve with his fingers and wiped Hammers’ face.
There was scuffling behind him, near Rucker Road. He glanced over his shoulder. Glowing eyes approached through the flitting clouds of ashes still lingering in the air. Hesitant, the Undead were amassing outside the pass. Likewise, across the trench, his men were coming down from the bluffs and gathering around the cannon.
Hammers coughed. His eyes were open, glazed, distant.
“Scott?” Strajowskie fought back tears and slapped Hammers’ cheeks. “Scott? Can you hear me?”
“He killed him,” Hammers croaked, still looking far away. “Frank. He killed Frank.” He reached up with a jerking hand and squeezed Strajowskie’s forearm. “So much for being immortal.” He attempted a chuckle. Black spittle splattered Strajowskie’s hands.
“Look, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” More coughing, then a seizure. When he stopped convulsing, he propped himself up and whispered harshly in Strajowskie’s ear. “Why does it hurt so goddamned much?”
Hammers went into another convulsion and fell back to the asphalt. Strajowskie leaned over his chest to survey the wound. A gaping hole in Hammers’ stomach, lined with chunks of bark; half of his intestines obliterated; ribcage showing, at least what was left of it. Strajowskie looked back at Hammers’ sternum and his eyes widened.
There, dangling like a black, rotted piece of raw meat, was half a heart. It pumped yet wasn’t whole.
Strajowskie unsheathed one of his wooden shuriken.
Hammers stopped convulsing and stared at Strajowskie. “Please.”
Strajowskie shook his head. “Not today.”
He then slit his own wrist with the shuriken and pressed the fresh wound to Hammers’ lips.
***
“What the hell is he doing?” Keith asked.
Cannopolis didn’t answer. He empathized with what Strajowskie was doing.
But he doubted he would have done the same.
“Does this mean it’s over?”
Cannopolis shook his head. “It’s never over, Manera.”
Without blinking, he watched the other side of the pass as the gathering vampires stirred.
***
Strajowskie stared in awe as Hammers’ heart solidified again. The rib bones grew, spongy in appearance; the intestines puffed out and elongated; muscles and veins reconnected; skin reformed.
Then General Hammers was standing before him, frowning. Strajowskie applied pressure to his wound and stood. He swooned. Hammers caught him and steadied him. Strajowskie plopped back onto his knees. Jarring pain rippled from knee joint to vertebrae.
Swaying on his knees, he looked up at Hammers. The Undead general sneered.
“You’ve made a huge mistake,” Hammers said in a low grumble.
***
Roterie edged along the bluff wall. Everyone was oblivious to his presence. He licked his lips. The human president knelt before Hammers.
To his right, his brethren stirred. Hungry. Anticipating a kill, warm blood.
Did Hammers have the gall to do it?
Roterie smiled, eyes glittering, as Hammers reached behind his back and withdrew a machete.
***
The Undead general swiped up in an arc.
Strajowskie shouldn’t have healed him. “This is our last civil meeting, old man.” Hammers had always made good on his word.
Strajowskie panicked. He didn’t have time to see if Cannopolis or Keith or Drake were reacting. He didn’t have time to announce a successor to the presidency. He didn’t have time to tell his son he loved him. He wouldn’t have time to apologize to Brian.
He uttered a prayer as Hammers stepped forward to deliver the killing blow.
But Hammers sidestepped Strajowskie instead. The air stirred behind him as Hammers chopped down with the machete. There was a grating sound, a gasp, the sickening crunch of sinew cut by steel. Strajowskie glanced over his shoulder. An awe-struck vampire burst into ash.
Charging figures filtered into the pass.
Then Hammers roared like a lunatic.
The charging figures halted and shrank back to the mouth of the pass, eyes aglow.
***
Hammers stepped back and stared down at Strajowskie. His right arm hung lucid at his side. The machete fell from his hand. “You’ve made a huge mistake,” he repeated. “I can never lead them again.”
The old man looked tired. Or perhaps it was the loss of blood. Either way, Strajowskie’s lips trembled. He was pale, clutching the wrist he’d slit to revive Hammers.
Strajowskie, so frail and fragile.
Strajowskie, so human.
As am I, Hammers realized far too late.
The vampires gathered outside the pass stirred again but none approached. They still revered him as their commander. Or couldn’t quite figure out why their commander had killed so many of their own, or why he just killed what would’ve been an Undead savior, or why he just bellowed like a madman.
“That was for my wife. For Frank,” Hammers muttered. “For all of you.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He stepped past the man he’d once looked to as a father figure and marched down the center of the pass until he was face-to-face with his own soldiers. Their eyes glowed, brows twisted in confusion. He allowed his emotions to overwhelm him until the red electricity crackled in his own eyes.
They parted before him, shrinking out of reach.
A shadow approached from the bluff wall to his right. He wasn’t surprised to see the scout, Roterie, with his mild mane and wide eyes.
So much like me. Ambition and desire radiated from Roterie’s glittering, questioning eyes, there was no mistaking it.
“General Hammers,” Roterie stated, stepping before him and blocking his path. He scrunched his face up in concentration, as if carefully choosing his next words. “Sir, where are you going?”
Hammers glared at him. “I’m retiring.” He placed a hand on the scout’s shoulder and nudged him aside.
He continued to push through the throng of Undead, unafraid of retaliation or harm. All the while, he wondered where he would go. His wife, killed by him, by the animal he’d become. His son, killed by the animal that was Barnaby.
He had nothing.
But Strajowskie had given him something worth holding onto.
No matter where he wound up, he would never forget that.
***
Roterie waited for the parted sea of vampires to collapse back in on itself. All eyes were on him. Undead of many ranks were there on the front line. Lieutenants, colonels, captains, privates.
And yet they stared upon him, a lowly scout.
Roterie knitted his brow and turned around. The old president was being escorted past the trench into the welcoming arms of his comrades. The pass still remained void of activity.
He snarled. It would not end like this.
He faced the Undead and nodded.
They filtered past, shrieking and salivating out of the unrelenting bloodlust that was their instinct.
Roterie stood rooted to the spot, proud to bear his new mantle as the unofficial General of the Undead.
***
“Retreat!” Cannopolis shouted from near the cannon.
Strajowskie was too weary to argue. His feet dragged on the asphalt, his arms draped about the shoulders of Keith and Drake. His bleeding wrist had been staunched by field medics, but he was in desperate need of a saline overhaul. He was far too coherent to require a transfusion, but he wouldn’t count anything out.
He didn’t glance back as screams erupted, fearful of the slaughte
r he would witness. Soldiers sprinted past, surrounding him and his escorts.
They would retreat, recover, rebuild in strength.
But the pass was lost. The middle of the country would fall to shambles.
The western front would be the humans’ final stand.
Chapter 43
The steps creaked as much as his joints. John shook from head to toe, though it was as much from anticipation as from fear. Death was finally approaching. It delighted him, to be rid of his accursed captor. To be free of living and everything it entailed.
And yet he was also afraid. It was one of the many great unanswered questions of mankind: What did it feel like to die? Would he cease to think, to breathe, to move, drifting off into a never-ending sleep? Would he have one final thought and then nothingness? Would it be painful or peaceful?
Would he go on into an afterlife? John wasn’t sure what he believed. He’d forsaken any type of structured religion long ago. If there was a Heaven and a Hell, he wasn’t sure where he would wind up.
He just hoped Catherine would be there waiting for him.
He eased a leg over the glass box Brian had fashioned. Brian stated it was supposed to be for observation purposes, but John thought it more a glass coffin than an observation tank. He lost his balance. A soft hand reached up and pushed against his back to steady him. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at Ruby.
So much like Catherine.
He slipped the other leg into the glass coffin. Coldness stole the warmth from the soles of his feet. Wearing only his robe to his funeral had not been a brilliant idea.
“Everything’s ready to go.” Brian bit at his lip, arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t spoken since John had returned for the experiment.
John felt a weight lift off of him. These two, they cared. They were concerned that their theories regarding the experiment could be wrong. They were concerned that they were putting an old man to death and unrightfully so.
The Human-Undead War Trilogy (Book 1): Dark Intentions Page 32