by Gwynn White
“I’m not necessarily complaining,” Hank said, abruptly changing his tone. “Keeps me on my toes, if nothing else.”
“That’s the spirit.” Was it, though? Was that really the spirit?
As if in a dream, Cato pulled the roadster to a stop. Wait… No, it was already stopped. Wasn’t it? “Well, guess we oughta get in there, huh?”
“I guess,” Hank said, trailing off slightly. “Wouldn’t it be funny, though, if we just hung out here for a while? Let all those other assholes sort it out for a change? They all hate us, you know.”
Cato laughed at that. Really started to belly laugh. “Yeah, but can you really blame them, though?”
“Oh, hell no. I’d hate us, too!”
“That… that would be… Oh, crap, Hank… Hank, it’s gas… It’s…”
Hank was already giggling senselessly, pawing with a shaky hand under his jacket for his pistol hanging in its cross-draw holster. “Wouldn’t it… wouldn’t it be funny if we just… punched our tickets right here…?”
Cato’s eyes went wide, but that was about as much as he could offer in response. He strained with every fiber of his being to stop Hank from reaching for his sidearm, their hands colliding dumbly several times before Hank finally swatted Cato’s away. Then Hank found the grip. Started to pull the weapon free of its holster beneath his jacket…
The passenger door opened abruptly, and a pair of massive hands grasped and pulled Hank from the roadster. Hank tried to resist, to his credit, but he was in no condition to fight, and he succumbed quickly. As one of those hands held him in place against the side of the roadster, the other pushed something against his face, as if to smother both Hank and his incessant giggling at the same time.
Slowly, the fight went out of Hank, and still Cato could do nothing. He tried to martial himself, to find not only the will to save himself but avenge his partner, but it simply wouldn’t come. Instead, he could only watch as the hands finished with Hank, depositing him delicately beyond Cato’s view on the passenger side of the roadster, then whoever it was disappeared around the back.
Cato knew they were coming for him, knew it was only a matter of time, and then he was being pulled from the roadster and stood against it, shaking his head and guffawing as that huge paw blurred out everything else…
One of the unintended side effects of Mayor Zobbles’s call for martial law was the inability of PWD to respond to calls from their own in a timely manner. Nissa was discovering that for herself. She was now on her own, guarding a Odin Guard hideout and weapons cache for nearly thirty minutes with backup still nowhere in sight. In that time, she had scoured the place from top to bottom, turning up nothing more than what was immediately obvious. Her prisoners had been safely installed in the backseat of Kleck’s own cruiser and were of no immediate concern to her—or so she thought.
Her first and only clue that something was amiss was a short, strangled cry of surprise. She almost called Kleck’s name, but caught her voice before it left her throat. Instead, she slipped her pistol from its holster, the well-worn leather whispering its approval in response. Holding the sidearm in front of her, she stepped to the door silently and peered out. It was too dark to see into the cruiser, but the shadows in the back seat seemed awkward somehow. Nissa took a careful step, then another, looking closer.
Kleck’s and the other man’s throats had both been slit.
Nissa was about to retreat back into the warehouse when she felt a presence behind her. Before she could respond, a blade was pressed against her neck, and a voice whispered into her ear.
“Who the hell are you?”
Nissa said nothing. Her mind raced, analyzing every possibility as it came to her. None of them were viable at this point. The only alternative was to try to reason with the man. Forcing herself to believe that was the best possible option, she was about to speak, to answer his question and any others he might have, when he pulled the knife away to show it to her.
“Did you not hear me? I will cut your—”
Big mistake. The few seconds he took to pull his blade from her neck happened to be just long enough for Nissa to smash the back of her head against his face. The man’s grunt of pain competed with the crunch of cartilage. Even if his nose wasn’t broken, he was staggered long enough for her to follow the headbutt with a strike of her heel to the middle of his foot, where all the fine bones came together. He fell back, as she’d expected, giving her time to swing away and bring her pistol up to bear against him. She was a hair’s breadth from pulling the trigger on him when he stood upright, slowly, and dropped the knife.
“Fair’s fair,” he said, the blade clattering at his feet. “Well-played.”
“If I may offer a piece of advice, maybe next time don’t stop to brag about your knife.”
“Note received. So, what now?”
Nissa took a hand away from her pistol long enough to toss him the handcuff key from her belt. “Take the cuffs off my former officer and place them on yourself. Then, take me to your vehicle. We’re going to see your boss.”
“Yeah,” the man agreed. “I think he’s going to want to meet you.”
“Good. Now, get to it.”
They were on the road less than five minutes later, the man cuffed with his hands in front of him so he could drive.
Even from the outskirts of the city, Nissa could see columns of smoke starting to rise over the skyline. Something was happening, she knew, but she couldn’t afford to be distracted.
“Tell me about your boss,” she said, making sure to keep a constant eye on her new driver.
“Nothing doing. The less you know, the longer I live.”
“I’d say the clock’s running out pretty quickly already.”
“Maybe. But that’s no reason not to milk every last second.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Or you could flip. Let PWD protect you.”
The man laughed. Loudly. “Honestly, I’d rather you just put one in the back of my head. It would be a mercy, comparatively. Hell, give me the gun and I’ll do it myself.”
“I think you know neither of those things is likely to happen.”
“A man can dream.”
“No law against that,” she agreed.
Then, suddenly, there was a flaming obstruction blocking their path. It had started as a PWD roadblock, Nissa could see, but it had been overtaken and desecrated. The disemboweled bodies of the officers who had been manning it were strung sideways across the portable struts, head to toe to toe to head, their guts spread out like some bizarre form of street art.
“Greetings, wights!” the vampire standing atop the refortified barricade said, spreading his arms wide. “We have a proposition for you. Your city is soon to fall, and we will be its masters. We can make your ends merciful, though. Exit your vehicle and we will see you off this plane quickly.” He paused—for effect, no doubt. “So, what say you?”
“I don’t know about you,” Nissa’s prisoner said, “but I’m not ready to becoming fucking corpse-bunting for these befanged twats.”
“Nor am I.”
“So, may I offer a proposition of my own?”
“This should be good.”
“Take off these cuffs, and we’ll fight them together.”
Nissa eyed him appraisingly over the barrel of her pistol.
“What?” he asked, shrugging. “You think you’re going to get a better offer from them?”
“I think I would rather take them on without having to worry about getting shot in the back.”
“Now, that wounds me. I respect you too much to shoot you in the back. I might try to get the drop on you again afterward, assuming we survive, but it wouldn’t be personal.”
“I appreciate your honesty. But, even if I were to take you up on your proposition, we have only the two pistols between us. We wouldn’t last five minutes.”
“Oh, honey. Do you really think I go anywhere in this city not strapped to the nines?”
Pursing her li
ps, Nissa ignored the flare of annoyance that came with being referred to as ‘honey.’ “Meaning?”
“Meaning, this vehicle is a rolling armory.”
“So, why only the knife earlier?”
“Knives are cleaner and quieter. Plus, I wasn’t expecting to do battle.”
“And now?”
“This,” he said, grinning at the field of potential victims through the shaded windshield, “would literally be the highlight of my year. Hell, my whole fucking life!”
Nissa eyed her prisoner levelly for another few moments before producing the handcuff key again. She couldn’t believe she was about to do what she was thinking. “The enemy of my enemy, right?”
“On that point, and that point alone, I think we can agree.”
“I hope you’re not lying.”
She would see either way, she knew, and tossed the key into his cupped hands. The man unlatched his cuffs, then dropped them and the key into the center console before he stepped out of the vehicle. She followed, rolling around to the back of the vehicle with him. True to his word, he popped the trunk and opened a trick compartment to reveal several high-caliber rifles of dubious provenance. All surely illegal, but just what Nissa and her unexpected ally needed to take on the strig horde threatening them.
“Ladies first,” her now-uncuffed prisoner said.
“How gallant.” She snagged one of the rifles, checked the load and sights, and nodded. “All right. Ready?”
“From the moment I was born.” He grinned almost manically, then swung out into the fray and screamed wildly as he fired. “Come on, you bloodsucking sons of bitches!”
Even more fascinating than his fearless advance was the way the man’s weapon responded to him. There was no hesitation, no delay between the pull of the trigger and the snap of the barrel. He pulled and pulled and pulled and the rifle fired and fired and fired.
Nissa looked down at the rifle in her hands, realizing it was of the same variety.
“What are you waiting for? Shoot, already!”
All at once, her instincts returned to her. Nissa planted the rifle’s butt against her shoulder and swung out to cover her side of the vehicle, sighting in on the first target she saw coming at her. She pulled the trigger. Felt the power of the shot, the whisper of the recoil as it swished against her, like a lover’s passing touch. She lifted her eyes in time to see the rushing vamp’s face as its torso exploded, the rest of its body incinerating in a fiery blossom of cinders and ash.
“Blighting hell! Are these phosphorous rounds?”
“You bet your sweet brown ass they are,” the man called back, still thumping off round after round with virtually no space in between. “Pretty great, right?”
Nissa looked at the weapon in her hand with pure horror, aghast at its capabilities. Then she realized she had no choice; the strigs were already closing on her unlikely ally despite his fearsome weapon.
And hers, she realized.
Throwing all thought and reason aside, Nissa charged. It was her or them, she reminded herself with every pull of the trigger, every exploding body, vampire or gargoyle.
She must have pulled the trigger thirty times before it went dry. She was about to toss the weapon and go for her sidearm when she heard her new friend call out. She looked and saw him lift his rifle and point to the clip before angling it down to fire off several bursts again. Nissa looked to her own weapon, noticing for the first time how the curved clips were taped together so they could be easily interchanged.
With a single nod back, she popped the clip, upended it, and resumed firing, to brutal effect.
The turned were getting closer. Worse, Ann and Jeanine were running short on ammo. With every pull of the trigger, Ann swore she could feel her sidearm getting lighter, as if it might just up and float out of her hands. It didn’t help that Jeanine seemed to have developed a sudden case of the yips, her last several shots missing their mark despite the increasing closeness of their targets.
“Pull yourself together, Officer Gatz.”
“I’m trying,” Jeanine shouted back.
Ann was about to shout back to her when the moment she had been dreading finally arrived. She pulled the trigger and nothing happened. She was out, her clips run dry. Jeanine was still in the fight, had maybe a handful of shots left, but that was hardly enough to bring down the last of the turned.
It should have been a difficult decision, and yet Ann found that the resolve it required came without hesitation. There was only one course of action. She had drafted Jeanine into this mess; the least she could do was give her a fighting chance to escape.
“Jeanine, I’m out of ammo. I need you to run, now!”
“But—”
“No buts!” Ann said, then pulled herself up with a pained groan and spread her arms as she walked out from behind the protection of her cruiser’s door. “You run now, and you don’t look back. I don’t care what you hear. Save the last few bullets and get the hell out of here.”
Ann was sure that at any moment the turned would rush her. Whether they would kill her outright or turn her into some twisted visage of her former humanity remained to be seen. All she knew is that whatever came next would be worth it, if only it gave Jeanine—
“Not a chance,” Jeanine shouted. She took aim at the nearest of the turned stalking toward Ann and blew its jaw off with a single shot. “Go for the trunk, I’ll cover you!”
Ann would have objected, but Jeanine was already retreating, firing off her last few rounds. Apparently, they were destined to make their last stand together, after all. Ann couldn’t think of anything more saddening or sobering, but she doubled back and rushed for the rear of the cruiser all the same.
“I told you to run,” she said angrily when she reached the back of the cruiser, then flung open the trunk.
“You should have known I wouldn’t,” Jeanine fired back.
“You and your damn uncle, I swear.”
They were pawing frantically through the trunk when the cruiser’s entire body rocked up and down. “Shit,” Ann barked, then grasped a clip and slammed it home. She shoulder-checked Jeanine out of the way, scrabbled back and drew a bead as the turned vamp who had landed on the cruiser peered over the trunk. Finger poised on the trigger, she found herself transfixed by the former human’s mouth and its newly minted, elegantly curved fangs. They gleamed brightly, horrifyingly, and for a moment Ann was certain they would be the last thing she ever saw before she became one of the turned.
Then the top half of the creature’s head exploded. It had been poised to leap upon her, but it fell limply against the cruiser instead, its skull completely pulped by a blast that could only have come from behind them.
Ann and Jeanine looked back, both their faces flooding with relief as John Rohner racked another round into his shotgun. The posse of trigger-pullers Ann had recruited for their mad dash into Tanglereave had finally caught up after being left behind in the chase to catch the tramcar—and not a moment too soon.
“Sorry to be tardy to the party,” Rohner said through a broad, grim grin.
“Hey, better late than never,” Ann said as she and Jeanine picked themselves up off the pavement.
They shared a small, significant glance, and only then realized they were both rubbing at their necks—an acknowledgment of how close they had come to losing their humanity, if not their very lives, for one another.
Meanwhile, Rohner’s civilian deputies fanned out to mop up the last of the turned. They were already congratulating themselves even as the last of their shots sounded through the streets. It was only as the echoes of those shots faded that the sound of approaching engines became audible, even formidable.
“Heads up,” called one of the more attentive deputies. “We’re not done yet!”
“Come on, buddy. Breathe.”
Cato came to suddenly, only to find some sort of contraption situated over his face. Instead of doing what the voice said—breathing—he fought and clawed against
the heavy hands holding him back. Finally, he relented, and so did his lungs, allowing in a strangely sharp, antiseptic breath, and then another, the filtered oxygen working to clear his head.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Hank said, kneeling over him and offering a hand up. “Come on, up and at ’em.”
“The hell?” Taking Hank’s hand, Cato allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. The mask affixed to his face swung uncomfortably, only underscoring his sudden return to consciousness. “What’d I miss?”
“Nothing much.” Hank’s voice, like his own, was slightly muffled by the mask he was wearing. “Your friend just saved us from our own maniacal selves, is all.”
Cato squinted, though not because of the lingering haze. His friend? That seemed unlikely, considering how few friends he had outside of Hank, and… well…
“Remember me, sir?” a new but vaguely familiar voice asked. “We met yesterday at the Hezekiel Stone scene.”
“Right, right.” Remember him? How could Cato not? The man was built like a brick shithouse, as Cato’s father would have said, his frame so broad and thick that even Hank would have been eclipsed by the man’s shadow. “Wexell, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cato nodded, still getting his bearings. “What are you doing here?”
“Chief Banner wasn’t too happy after you guys took over the scene yesterday. This morning, I got reassigned to the prison beat. I’m not much of a numbers guy, but even I can do the math.”
Cato felt the mask pinch his cheeks as he winced. The prison beat was generally considered a career killer, an area of nearly zero criminal activity where it was more or less impossible to distinguish oneself. Some would have called it a petty move, but Cato would likely have done the same thing had he been in Ann’s shoes after such a hard snub. It wasn’t like he was about to tell Wexell that, though. “Sorry about that. Wasn’t our intention.”
“Hey, we all have bosses,” Wexell said, shrugging those huge shoulders. “Anyway, I got here right after SWAT went in. Heard the… well, the laughter, then saw the gas pouring out and grabbed the mask in my car. Found those ones you two are wearing in the SWAT van.”