It stuck out and weighed down the hilt, but after clicking the switch on and touching it against the metal surface of the work table, he knew it was working. A few sparks flew off where the edge of the blade touched the metal surface, sending a current through the whole thing.
He now had a shock machete. Next up was the gun.
It was too big and heavy the way it was, so he used the buzz saw to cut the barrels off just above the walnut shaft. He then sawed the butt down until it was just a handle. He’d turned the beautifully crafted weapon into a sawn-off.
Once finished, he lit up a cigarette and looked out of the window. It was getting dark very fast. The storm clouds now covered the whole sky above the city and the light behind them was getting weaker. It was time to go to work.
Selena and the others would be able to move around now, which meant he had to find them fast.
Newton High School
At the same time that the annoying drizzle started to fall from the sky, students dressed to impress began arriving at the school. Some came in limos, while other just turned up in cabs and rented cars, but they were all arriving fast.
The girls in their beautiful gowns shielded their specially groomed hair, as they rushed through the rain towards the entrance of the school. All the guys were wearing tuxedos which looked stupidly identical. The ladies seemed to have made way more of an effort to look not only gorgeous, but unique as well.
Inside, people were getting pictures taken of themselves in their formal wear and handing out drinks. They were laughing and joking and enjoying themselves all around. The girls were chatting avidly about how amazing their dresses were and about which guys pulled off a tuxedo the best.
The music, which was some chart song that Jerry had probably never heard of, was blaring and already there were people dancing. All the while, Goose, who’d just stolen a spare black suit jacket, but was still wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, moved around the hall, glancing out of the windows.
On the other side of the room, Claire copied his movements. She had decided that wearing a black tank top and a short skirt over her black trousers counted as dressing up. It was pretty obvious that she had gotten bored of ‘pretty dresses and make-up’ years ago. Now she did just enough to make herself look sexy, which wasn’t hard, considering her natural beauty.
Steve and Sarah arrived a few minutes later. They were both wearing the clothes that they’d prepared for the Prom before realizing that it could turn into a war zone at any moment. Sarah had a dark blue dress that hugged her curves and had her golden hair up in a bun, while Steve had gone for the bow tie tux look that most of the other guys had.
They saw Goose and walked over to him.
“Wow, you look dashing,” Sarah smirked at his clothes.
“I ain’t here to win beauty pageants, I’m working,” he shrugged.
“You certainly look the part,” she said.
“Where’s your date?” Steve asked.
“Over there,” Goose nodded to her. “Roach is covering the hallways and the windows by the DJ stand and Joe and Parker are upstairs being our spotters.”
“I never thought I’d be wearing a gun under my Prom tux,” Steve sighed.
“It would be worse if you weren’t. Just think of yourself as James Bond.”
“Would that make you Moneypenny?” he smiled and looked at Sarah.
“Oh, James,” she gasped eccentrically.
“We got the room covered, why don’t you two go have a dance?” Goose suggested with a smile.
“We’re here to work too, remember?” Steve said.
“Forget it, it’s cool. Try and enjoy yourselves,” he said. “Don’t make me push you.”
The two love birds smiled at each other before walking off to the dance floor. It was only a small thing, but the fact that they could share a dance at Prom made Goose feel a little better. He watched them for a moment, wondering if he would ever find someone to be that happy with. Steve and Sarah seemed to fit together so well.
He never really thought about things like true love or soul mates, but it was nice to see and maybe even to believe that those sorts of things did exist. He sighed, pushing his thoughts away and quickly got back to the task at hand. He turned away from the dance floor and walked over to the windows. Making sure that it was concealed, he pulled the radio from his pocket and spoke into it.
“Joe, you copy?”
“Yeah, go ahead Goose,” Joe’s voice said.
“The rain’s becoming a pain in the ass. I can barely see fifty feet outside,” he said, squinting out at the stormy weather. A flash of lightning shot through the sky, temporarily illuminating the darkness.
“It’s okay, I got a night scope and a bird’s eye view up here,” Joe replied.
“Night vision...cool,” he had to admit.
“Enjoy the party, out.”
He tucked the radio back into his pocket, just as a familiar voice spoke from behind him.
“Wow, that’s a nice tux, Goose.” Mike Stranden. He was standing there with a hot little dark skinned girl, looking smug. “You know, Jerry never got around to fixing my car.”
“Yeah, well, in case you didn’t hear, he’s been in hospital,” Goose said, trying to hide his desire to punch the dick.
“Right, I heard you guys wrecked Steve’s car too. You seem to be doing that a lot lately,” he said, looking a little pissed off.
Goose fought the urge to say something nasty back. He gritted his teeth and smiled. “Enjoy the party Mike.”
“You too,” he said, giving Goose a similar look. “Where’s your date?”
“His date’s right here.” Claire strutted past Mike and put her arm around Goose. Mike’s jaw dropped and he couldn’t stop staring at how hot Claire was.
“You okay sweetie?” she asked, playing the part perfectly.
“Yeah, I’m fine baby. Mike, Claire, Claire, Mike,” he said, falling into character as well.
“You...you two are...are?” Mike stuttered, still shocked by the unbelievably sexy woman who had her arm around Goose.
“Yeah, we just started dating,” Claire smiled. “We were gonna stay home and just have lots of sex, but we thought, what the hell, let’s check out Prom.”
The moment she mentioned sex, Mike suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. He was clearly getting a boner just thinking about it.
“Wanna get a drink, baby?” Claire asked.
“Sure sweetie, see ya round Mike,” Goose grinned, and the two of them walked away.
Mike couldn’t help but stare at Claire’s ass as she moved past him, which earned him an angry punch in the arm from the girl he was with.
“Thanks for that,” Goose said, trying not to laugh.
“You’re welcome,” Claire smirked, looking quite proud of herself.
The two of them walked over to the entrance where they split up again and took separate parts of the room to watch over. Even though rain continued to pour outside, more and more students turned up until the place was completely packed. There much have been a hundred and fifty people there, maybe more.
Goose checked his watch. It was eight twenty two. Time seemed to be dragging. He decided to take a little walk to the main entrance of the school to see how many more students were arriving.
Apart from a few stragglers and a couple making out against the lockers, it seemed as if most people had already arrived. No other cars were approaching the school, so hopefully this was all the people they’d have to worry about for the night.
He was on his way back when he saw a pair of girls, one in a blue dress, the other wearing black, walk over to the smooching couple.
“Ashley, can I borrow your phone? Mines got no signal,” the girl in blue asked.
The girl named Ashley pulled herself away from the guy she was kissing and quickly dug through her purse looking for her phone. She found it and was about to hand it to her, when the screen caught her eye.
“Huh, mine’s got no signal ei
ther. Maybe it’s the storm?”
A cold feeling washed over Goose’s stomach and he pulled his own cell out from his pocket. It was the same on his. A small message on the screen reading: Service currently unavailable.
He quickly started walking back towards the party and grabbed the radio from his jacket.
“Roach, you copy?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he responded.
“Is your phone working?”
There was a moment of silence before he came back over the radio. “I got no signal,” he said.
“Joe, you catch that?” he asked, getting worried.
“Yeah, I got it,” his voice said, “mine’s not working either.”
“I know you’re the military man here, but isn’t it standard procedure to cut all lines of communication before an attack?”
“You’re right, it is.”
“The cell towers are only like a mile from here,” Roach added.
“What do we do? Pull the alarm now, or what?” Goose asked.
“Wait,” Joe interrupted. All of the people with walkies stood in silence waiting for him to say something. “Pull the alarm, get the guns. They’re here.”
CHAPTER 22 – After School Special
St. Cloud Recycling Plant
Sophinia’s people were all over the place. They were checking every structure in the entire area. They had scoured more than two thirds of the plant already and found nothing. There were dozens of warehouses and containers around them, but all of them were filled with piles of plastic and glass that were waiting to be reverted back to their original make-up.
The pureblood’s blond hair was slick and sticking to her skin from the rain that was pouring down, but she didn’t seem to even notice it. Her eyes were scanning the area very carefully. Next to her, Rachel was trying to make a call on her cell.
She groaned in annoyance and angrily pressed a button on it. “Something’s wrong. I’ve tried calling Claire and Joe, but I keep getting re-directed.”
“You’re right. Get everyone together, we’re going to the school,” Sophinia nodded.
“Soph!” they both turned to see Larz standing next to the door of a warehouse about a hundred yards away. He was looking worried. “You’re gonna want to see this!”
They walked over to him and entered the warehouse, flanked by about fifteen other vampires. They walked around a corner and into an open spot.
All of their faces suddenly turned slack with shock.
Littered around the room were piles of ash, some still had a few fading embers amongst them. Someone had executed over two dozen vampires in that warehouse and they had done it very recently.
“I count twenty-five, maybe thirty,” Larz said.
“That’s at least half of Black Forest’s forces,” another vampire said in awe.
“Who did this?” Rachel gasped.
“I don’t know,” Larz shrugged. “The only scents I’m picking up are these poor bastards.”
“What the hell kind of creature has the juice to ice thirty vampires and not leave a single trace?”
She had no answer, but she knew what they needed to do. “We need to get to the school!” Sophinia growled.
Newton High School
Joe was still perched at the window on the top floor of the school in an empty classroom. He stared through the scope of his night vision goggles as the fire alarm blared around the school. Black Forest were gathering at the tree line. There were at least thirty of them, maybe more, but they weren’t attacking...yet.
“Err, Joe, we got a problem,” Goose’s voice said over the radio.
“No shit. There’s a lot more of them out there than we thought,” he said back, not taking his eyes away from the scope.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
“Well, what do you mean?”
“Err...they’re not leaving...”
“Well, obviously they’re not leaving -”
“I don’t mean the vamps...I mean the students, they’re not leaving...”
That was enough to make him look away from his goggles.
“What do you mean they’re not leaving?” he asked.
“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! We don’t need no water...” Goose had held the radio up to the crowd of kids who were completely disregarding the fire alarm going off. “They don’t seem all that concerned about being burned alive,” he said in a worried voice.
“Christ! What the hell is wrong with kids these days?!” Joe huffed.
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Claire’s voice agreed.
“Look, I don’t care what you have to do, just get them out of there! Black Forest are currently to the west and inside the tree line. I think the fire alarms have confused them because they’re just milling around,” he ordered.
“That won’t last,” Claire warned.
“I know. Let’s just hope they don’t figure out we’re here with enough fire power to perform a Libyan coup d’état.”
Below, the partying students were still jumping around and singing about the roof being on fire. This was their prom and they weren’t going to leave until the fire department or the police booted them out, and Goose couldn’t exactly get on the microphone and tell them that vampires were massing outside the school.
They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.
“That’s it! I’m firing into the air!” he growled and reached for the gun that was tucked into his belt.
“Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Claire said, stopping him.
She rushed over to the DJ’s booth, shut off the music and grabbed the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen I need your attention please,” her voice rang out around the room, “I’m agent De Blanc with Homeland security. I need you to evacuate immediately, there is a bomb in the building!”
Suddenly the good mood of every student in the school evaporated. For a small moment they all just stood there with their eyes getting wider. Then somebody screamed and one hundred plus kids rushed towards the exit as fast as they could.
They pushed and shoved their way past each other, knocking tables and chairs over and smashing glasses as they went. Apparently terrorists scared them way more than fire.
Claire rejoined Goose a moment later.
“I knew that wasn’t his date,” they heard Mike Strandon mutter as he rushed to the entrance.
“Agent De Blanc from Homeland security?” Goose asked, not sounding all that impressed.
“What? It was all I could think of!”
“If we make it out of this, we are so getting arrested!” Goose groaned and rushed towards the door with Claire, Roach, Steve and Sarah in tow.
They rushed past the panicking kids in their formal wear and off into the school, heading for Parker's office.
“Parker, you get all that?” Goose asked over the radio.
“Yeah, I’m on the school entrance side. I don’t see any of them over here,” he relayed back.
“We’re heading to your office, meet us there.”
Ninety seconds later they arrived at Parker’s office and immediately grabbed the heavy bags. They rested them on his desk and began pulling heavy firepower out. Joe arrived a few seconds later and immediately grabbed a shotgun.
“Is Selena out there?” Claire asked, grabbing a leather belt with a pair of Silver Ginsu knives holstered in it and strapping it around her waist.
“I didn’t see her,” he said, loading twelve gauge rounds into the shotgun.
“Joe, I need a hand with this,” Goose said, grabbing the heaviest of the bags. Joe helped him put it on the table and after unzipping it, Joe saw exactly why it was so heavy.
“You brought the minigun?” he said, looking down at the six cylinder barrels of the M-134.
“I brought the minigun,” Goose nodded. He grabbed a big metal box and opened the hatch on the top of it revealing thousands of silver tipped 7.62 millimeter rounds. “I switched over the rounds, but you only got about two thou’ of them
and you’re gonna burn through those in about a minute, so make them count.”
“Will do,” he said, strapping the belt feed into the gun, then connecting it to the ammo crate.
Blood Heavy (Blood Heavy Series) Page 30