by J. R. Rain
His M16, however, appears to have all the answers he needs.
After observing his pattern for a few minutes (he mostly stands in place scratching himself or spitting) I creep to my right and circle around. The closer I get to him, the stronger this weird feeling of being a hunter comes out of nowhere. Instincts I never had before kick in, guiding me in for a kill. My feet find purchase on ground that doesn’t rustle. I leap from dirt patch to rock to dirt patch with little effort, stealing up behind this guy like a cat on a blind mouse. When I get within four feet of him, I edge into hiding behind a tree and watch, waiting for his right hand to release the pistol grip of his M16 and plunge into his pants for another scratch.
A brief vision of leaping out and sinking my fangs into the side of his neck comes and goes.
Stop it. That’s not why I’m here.
The instant he lets go of the rifle grip, I swoop up behind him and clamp my left hand over his mouth. He doesn’t even manage to get his hand out of his belt before I swing him around and drive him forehead-first into a tree hard enough to leave a pat of blood on the bark and knock him clean out.
After easing him to the ground, I squat beside him and unload the rifle, also ejecting a round from the chamber. Unlike Renton, this guy’s got a full-on M16 with three-round-burst on the fire selector. I’m quite sure none of these guys have a Class III weapons permit. Oh, the ATF is going to have a field day with them once I’m done here.
The magazine and stray bullet, I keep. His rifle is now little more than a glorified club without ammo. A quick search turns up a 1911 .45 pistol on a belt holster, which I also unload and clear. I’m not worried about the knives along his belt; those won’t make noise. Besides, he won’t be doing much moving anytime soon, especially after I break the strap off the M16 and use it to bind his arms behind his back. I doubt it’ll hold him for too long, but with that hit to the head, well, he’s going to be dazed enough that it’ll buy me some time.
While I’m securing the nylon strap into a knot, it hits me that I just rushed up on and took out a sentry. It feels like I’m playing that game Danny likes… Patrol Boat Alpha―some Vietnam War thing he’s got on the laptop. He cheered like a little boy the first time he pulled off a ‘silent takedown’ of a sentry. Then again, a beered-up, 350-pound rube is hardly a trained enemy soldier, but hey, I gotta start small, right?
My ears prick at a distant sound―voices.
Leaving tall, bald, and sleepy behind, I start off at a fast walk to the south. About a minute later, I spot a natural wall formed by a pair of fallen trees, which seems like a decent place to take cover for a look around. It’s also got a convenient hole to stash the magazines I’d confiscated. From where I’m crouching, I catch sight of electric lights shimmering in the distance. They’re probably not too bright and obvious, but my eyes aren’t exactly normal anymore. Hell, I’m not exactly normal anymore. Any lingering doubts I have about what I am are in serious jeopardy after manhandling Renton, plus that sentry. Sigh. Well, that does explain how my attacker threw me thirty feet into a tree and broke my ribs. Maybe he did break my spine and it healed the same way my neck did?
I shudder.
Six steps from my temporary hiding place, something gleams near the ground. Ooh, they’ve set up tripwires! Wow, I’ve found a bunch of paranoid bastards. Or big little boys playing fort. A thin metal wire runs from a tree, crosses a six-foot span a few inches off the ground, and connects to a black box a little larger than a soda can duct-taped to a tree.
Unfortunately, I have about as much training with this sort of thing as Tammy has at being a sushi chef. This could be a noisemaker alarm, a smoke grenade, a nail bomb, or an actual grenade hidden inside a can. I don’t bother attempting to disarm it, or even touch it. I’ll leave that to the ATF for later. For now, I step over it and pay extra attention to the ground. Over the next thirty or so yards, I avoid three more tripwires and a couple of pit traps.
At least these guys suck at rigging traps. They’re so easy to spot.
Or… maybe I’m cheating. I don’t think many people have eyes this sharp at night.
Crap. What’s wrong with me? Am I actually starting to entertain the idea of enjoying what I’ve become? I admit, it is kinda cool to feel super-powered (though night vision is kind of a wimpy power if I’m honest with myself. Give me flying or laser beam eyes, right?), but… my family. I still don’t know for sure what effect my change is going to have on my kids. No superpower, no matter how cool, is worth losing my family.
And I can’t have Starbucks anymore.
At least not without puking it. Hmm. Maybe I can make an exception and order the tall size to enjoy the flavor. Or maybe just swish it around my mouth and spit. For mocha, I’ll tolerate the occasional prayer to the porcelain god. Maybe I can train myself to hold food down longer than a few minutes.
Anyway, I creep around traps and holes, as well as any spot of ground that doesn’t look completely normal. Hell, these morons might be stupid enough to use actual land mines. After all, they stole a machine gun from a military armory. I bet the CID guys are having a field day trying to figure out which Guardsman is working with them. Nothing like that happens without an inside guy.
Again, I take cover behind a tree and peer out at the Brothers of the Republic compound. From my position north of the property, I’ve got a clear view of the grounds. A ramshackle fence of chain link, corrugated metal panels, and wood surrounds it on all sides except where the dirt road I’d been driving on enters at the northwest corner. The leftmost building, a huge, one-story rectangle, appears somewhere between horse stable and warehouse as far as design goes. Its north wall has a garage door with plenty of dents. Directly in front of me, a smaller, square building appears hand-made from cinder blocks. It’s got no windows or doors on the side facing me, so that’s got to either be an armory or where they plan to shelter when ‘The Man’ comes for them. The rightmost building at the west end looks like an ordinary one-story ranch house, albeit small. It’s L-shaped, with the long part going to my right and the short end pointing at me.
Three vehicles, two pickup trucks and a cargo van, stand in a cluster near the front of the house where the dirt road ends. A glint to the right of the house draws my eye to a squat metal shed barely two feet tall, the roof of which is a pair of doors secured shut by a chain wound through the handles and padlocked.
That looks like a root cellar or underground bunker entrance.
Hmm. If Terrell is still alive, he’d likely be in the reinforced cinder block structure or maybe in the root cellar. Those doors appeal to me more, both due to their being easier to access plus, well, the large padlocked chain securing them.
Something or someone is in there...
I stand and dart over to the fence. Climbing it would make noise, and the gate by the road is only about sixty feet away to my right. Of course, if these people are watching anywhere at all, they’ll be watching the road. Still, I am a lot quieter and darker than a car with headlights. Aww, hell with it. With slow, deliberate strides, I make for the road and duck inside, veering hard left as soon as I’m past the gate so I can keep to the shadows.
All the buildings have exterior lights, but only garden-variety 110-watt bulbs. This isn’t exactly Fort Knox. No halogen lamps, infrared cameras, or motion sensors here. The blue Ford I saw at Joey’s is one of the vehicles parked in front of the house. Score! Hmm. On a whim, I change course and hurry due south to the trucks.
I’m intending to disconnect the batteries to keep any suspects from fleeing, but when I reach the front of the van, I notice keys hanging from the sun visor. Wow, how dumb are these guys? After swiping the keys and pocketing them, I ease the van door closed and move over to the blue Ford.
Footsteps crunch behind the house, getting closer.
I drop to the ground and scoot under the pickup a few seconds before a set of black boots and jean-covered legs walks into view around the corner. He (most likely a he) heads over to the root cel
lar. Once Boots gets far enough away and I can see more than just legs, I recognize the fortyish guy from Joey’s, Ted Clarke, the one who hit the floor and didn’t try to shoot us.
He kicks the door twice. “Hey, reporter man, you sleepin’ good?”
My eyes narrow. Okay, first of all… bingo. And second of all… yay. The reporter’s alive.
Yet, somehow I knew this. Hmm.
Anyway, there’s no reaction from beneath the doors. Ted chuckles and walks off to his right, apparently meandering around for a not-too-urgent patrol. I lay there in the dirt under the Ford, inhaling the reek of motor oil and tire rubber for a few minutes until he’s way off by the ‘barn’ at the opposite end of the compound.
After crawling out away from him, I open the passenger door and check the sun visor for keys. Sure enough, these guys are that predictable. The other pickup, a red Chevy, has its keys there too. Awesome. All three vehicles hopefully disabled.
My over-tuned ears pick up a moan of pain, echoey like a stone-walled room, from the direction of the root cellar.
Yes! The reporter is alive.
I peer up over the bed of the Chevy and look around for any signs of motion. The house is dark, the ‘stable/garage’ is dark as well. Way off to the east, the crunch-crunch-crunch of Ted walking continues. He’s probably about as far away from the root cellar as he can get without leaving the fenced-in area. Perfect.
A sprint covers the thirty or so feet to the root cellar in seconds. I grab the padlock in both hands and lean backward until I’ve taken up all the slack in the chain.
Okay vampire-ness, let’s see what you can do.
And what I have to do is break open this lock silently. I lean backward some more, my shoes at first finding purchase in the dirt, but then slipping. I next brace one shoe against the metal door… feeling sort of badass in the process. The lock starts to slip out of my hand, so I squeeze harder. My quick gasps of breath are purely out of habit, since air is evidently not important for me anymore.
The twin doors creak and groan from the chain pulling at the handles. A subdued thump from bending metal startles me motionless for a second. Once I’m sure no one heard or reacted to that, I resume increasing force. Grunting, I grab on with my other hand, and pull with all the strength I can pour into it.
Pank!
The shackle snaps, sending me flying over backward. I have no damn idea where the padlock’s loop went; I’m holding only the case. Chains fall with a loud clatter―well, at least loud to me―on the cellar doors, so I decide to stay down.
Ted doesn’t come running, so perhaps my enhanced senses have scared me again and he couldn’t, you know, actually hear it from so far away. That, or he thinks it’s just Terrell kicking the doors again. Right. Kidnapped reporter. On it.
I spring to my feet and pull the chain away from the handles, slinging it clear and tossing it over the fence into the woods. The moaning continues from down below, along with gasping, grunting, and the scuff of a shoe on concrete. Sounds like Terrell is preparing himself for another close encounter of the redneck kind. Little does he know…
“Terrell,” I whisper, before easing the door up an inch. “Relax. I’m a friend.”
He moans.
Damn. That sounds bad. I pull the door up higher, revealing a steep stairway down to a concrete-floored room full of narrow support columns and steel shelves packed with canned goods and brown MRE packets. Semi-dry bloodstains on the floor cause a mixture of angry and hungry. Great. Most people see a man being tortured and get furious.
I get hangry.
Grumbling to myself, I climb down and lower the door closed over my head. “Relax, Terrell. I’m here to help.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Root Cellar
I’m sure it’s pitch dark down here with the door closed, but I can still see as if the space had dim lighting.
Perhaps even more interesting is the means by which I can see; indeed, the air is filled with fine filaments of glowing light, filament that seems to show down in waves from an unknown source, filaments that I had never known existed before. The light particles illuminated everything around them, and I paused briefly, in awe of this ability to see further than I had ever seen before. What the light source was, I didn’t know, but it was everywhere, and it flowed, flowed… endlessly.
Terrell Summerlin lays slumped against the rear wall between two shelves about thirty feet away. Bloodstains saturate the fabric of his tank top undershirt, and his dark pants have multiple rips and tears. His hands are cuffed behind his back and linked by padlocked chain to one of the shelves. The stink of piss and blood is overwhelming.
Sons of bitches. My knuckles creak from clenching my fists.
“Hey,” I whisper, hoping he’s got enough coherence to understand me. “I’m a federal agent. I’m here to help.”
Terrell lifts his head. Goopy blood trails from his lower lip, still swollen from a recent pummeling. “What? Where?”
“Don’t yell. Keep quiet, please. I’m a friend.” I hurry over to him and take a knee.
He startles when I put a hand on his shoulder. His skin is burning hot. At least my complete horror at how people could be this cruel to another human being is so strong I don’t feel the least bit of temptation to suckle straight from one of his many open wounds.
Eww. Did I really just think that?
I reach around behind him, grasp the cuffs, and snap the chain (flimsy as hell compared to the one on the doors). He makes no attempt to move. I ease his arms around and drape them in his lap.
“Can you walk?” I whisper.
“You’re really here?” He looks toward me, almost. “I can’t see.” His lips quiver like he’s about to start crying.
“Relax. It’s dark in here. You shouldn’t be able to see.”
His emotion levels off to confusion. “How are you seeing?”
“Never mind that,” I say, knowing intuitively that my suggestion will somehow be heeded. Really, mind control? “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Right when I grab his arm to pull it over my shoulder and help him up, the lights come on.
For a second or two, I feel like I’m at ground zero of a nuclear test. Everything goes white. I can’t see a darn thing.
“Ngh!” moans Terrell.
“Well, well, well,” says a thick voice with a hint of phlegm. “What have we got here?”
My eyes adjust to the rapid change from total dark to having six naked lightbulbs blaring. A pattern of irregular scuffing tells me I’ve got three men walking up behind me.
“Stay down,” I whisper to the journalist.
He nods.
I stand into a turn, facing Mitch Gallagher, Ted Clarke, and Joey Bell. All three carry M16s, but in a casual sideways manner, likely not thinking a little woman’s any real threat. Mitch, sporting a goatee he didn’t have in any of the pictures, leads the pack.
The instant we lock eyes, the front of Joey’s jeans darkens with piss.
“Federal agent,” I say, putting a hand on my Glock. “Put the weapons down and take three steps back.”
Ted snaps his M16 up, pointing it at me.
Mitch chuckles. “And I’m Elvis Presley.”
“Oh, she’s the real deal,” says Ted, nodding toward Joey. “She’s the one from numbnut’s house.”
“Don’t matter.” Mitch grins in a way that makes my skin crawl. I can practically picture him peeling my clothes off with his eyes, thinking he’s going to keep me down in this cellar like Terrell for who knows how long. “She ain’t got no authority out here. Damn fool thing you did, girlie. Comin’ out to visit us all alone. Not quite sure what you threatened my good friend Renton with, but your fine little ass ain’t gonna stir up no shit on him. Or be heard from again. Yeah, we found your minivan, girlie. You’re alone. God knows why you’re alone, but you are. And now, your ass is mine.”
That’s almost funny. Mitch thinks this is a horror movie where a woman gets chained up a
nd abused. He might be right about horror―I lick at my fang point―but he’s got the wrong movie script.
“Just yours?” I ask. “You won’t share? You hear that, boys? He’s taking my ass all for himself. What a douche.”
Mitch frowns. “You think you’re funny, girl? Eh? I think you’re as unclean as that no-good reporter man.”
“Really?” I blink, holding my arm up. “This isn’t white enough for you?”
Ted scoffs. “It ain’t all about blood purity. You sold out to the government. You’re one of them now.”
“Them?” I quirk an eyebrow at him. “What, like lizard men or the grey aliens? Which particular conspiracy LSD are you guys on? Help me out here.”
Mitch spits to the side.
“You let ’er leave, an’ she’s gonna bring whole heap o’ trouble,” yells a woman from the stairs. “The whole damn government’s been taken over by the damn unclean ones. They’re all like her.”
Wait. Like me? Crap! Joey saw me take a bullet and not die. His soaked jeans are proof he knows that my life has gone into two-plus-two-equals-six territory. But the other two don’t appear worried. No stakes. Nothing out of the―oh, she’s talking about unclean in the way their little group uses it. Anyone who isn’t white enough or paranoid enough. Pretty sure being a federal agent puts me with the opposition team.
Well, for however much longer my status as a government employee lasts.
Mitch shakes his head and raises his rifle. “Damn shame. Awful damn pretty thing ta waste.”
“Thank you for trying,” whispers Terrell behind me, before continuing to mutter prayers.
“I saw your website,” I say, leaning toward the men. “I realize you three aren’t exactly on speaking terms with rational thought or intelligence past a fourth-grade level, but it’s in your best interest to stand the hell down.”
“Just shoot her,” mutters Mitch.