Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  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.”

  “Guess no one counted on the prisoners getting into the gas,” Hank said.

  “Hard to blame ’em. Who takes over a prison just to fortify themselves inside?” With a nod to Wexell, Cato asked, “How did you know about the gas, anyway?”

  “Pop was PWD. I was the apple who didn’t fall so far from the tree, but my older brother, he had his troubles. Saw the inside of that jail a few times. Said the gas was the thing he hated the most. He used to wake up from his nightmares crying and laughing at the same time.”

  Cato knew better than to ask what had become of Wexell’s brother. “All right,” he said instead. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Sir?” Wexell asked.

  “Come on. You’re coming in with us. Unless you’re happy with the prison beat, that is.”

  “No, sir. I mean, count me in! I’ve got your backs.”

  21

  It was all coming down around them, Ann thought. Everything she and her colleagues had worked so hard to protect and help prosper—these were its last moments. Its gasping, dying breath.

  The sound of the engines roaring in toward them was only the prelude to a small army of Steelskin youths led by none other than Kaboc Melo. He announced himself as such, mounting the hood of one of his heavy vehicles and declaring quite loudly, “The city shall soon be ours, wights! You may stand down now, or fall where you stand. The choice is yours.”

  A moment passed as Ann and her makeshift posse looked to one another. She could read the answer in their determined expressions, each of them standing firm and stoking their collective fire. There was no backing down, no hint of surrender in their eyes. Even Jeanine was on board, her nod of support unequivocal.

  “We fight till we fall,” Ann shouted in response, defiant to the end. Then she was speaking to her people, rallying them as best she knew how. “Up the steps, get behind the balustrades and protect City Hall. We fight till we fall, damn it!”

  There was no shortage of hell to break loose then, both sides opening fire as one group advanced and the other backpedaled. The strigs had the numbers, but the overturned tramcar and the set of steps only a few yards behind it gave the wights a strategic advantage. Some weren’t fast enough, but they had known the risks when Ann had re-deputized them earlier. The rest made it behind the balustrades, where they took cover and fired between the spaces it offered at the marauding horde threatening to devour not just them, but Meridia herself, alive.

  “We fight till we fall,” Ann shouted again and again over the pummeling chorus of weapons being fired back and forth, adding a few notes of her own into the mix. “We fight till we fall!”

  * * *

  The prison was a bloodbath, top to bottom. Puddles of the stuff on the floor, arterial sprays and finger trails decorating the painted cinderblock walls like abstract art, whole and partial limbs scattered here and there. Then, there were the cells themselves, where mask-less SWAT members and inmates alike had met their gory ends. Cato would have preferred not to look, but there was no way to clear the halls without peering into the cells on either side. Behind him, Hank stood fast with Wexell bringing up the rear.

  “Holy hell,” he heard Wexell mutter as they moved through the carnage. The blood on the floor had started to congeal, and their boots squelched audibly as they moved through the seemingly deserted prison. The sound was sickening, seeming to echo much louder than it actually was in the absence of any other noise. Worse, it could easily give away their position to anyone lurking nearby.

  “Focus up,” Cato said, casting his voice over his shoulder. “Try to stick to the bare spots.”

  Hank scowled, sparing a glance to the streaked, gore-soaked floor. “What bare spots?”

  For that, Cato had no answer. They ha
d little choice but to press on, their comrades’ blood sounding their advance with every step, no matter how hesitant or carefully placed. Still, the bloodshed proved to be a form of breadcrumbs, neatly laying out the path they should follow. Even without an intimate knowledge of the prison’s layout, all they had to do was follow the carnage coloring the halls and walls.

  They passed through the primary cell block without incident. For all the evidence of a slaughter, the lack of any survivors or stragglers was disconcerting. At the very least, they should have encountered someone left behind to slow their advance. At worst, they should be fighting not to be made part of the prison’s morbid redecoration scheme.

  The cafeteria was the scene of the worst slaughter, or at least the most concentrated. The tables and benches more closely resembled butchering stations, the meals that had once adorned them replaced by slicks of blood and dismembered limbs. The tattered remnants of their orange jumpsuits were befouled with the dark crimson of drying blood and worse.

  Together, Hank and Cato had witnessed some of the worst the Nothnocti Wars had had to offer (both through their scopes and up close), but this was on a whole other level. These prisoners had never had a chance. One moment, they were consuming their underwhelming prison fare; the next, they were the ones being consumed.

  One quick look over his shoulder told Cato his partner was of the same mind. Hank lifted a bug-eyed gaze from the floor, puffing his cheeks and blowing out a breath as he shook his head.

  They pressed on, passing through the cafeteria and into the administrative portion of the prison. The chaos was different there; the guards and other assorted personnel in that section had had time to arm themselves and prepare for a last stand. It hadn’t worked, but their efforts were obvious, even admirable, given how quickly everything had happened. Black blood mingled in spots with red, indicating that at least some of the guards had found their mark.

  “Hey,” Hank said, gesturing to a stairwell off to the side. The gate securing it had been torn from its hinges, with streaks of red-black blood leading up the stairs beyond. “Radio room is going to be up this way, yeah?”

  Cato turned toward the stairwell, gave it a hard look and nodded. “Sound reasoning. Take point.”

  “My pleasure.” Taking that first step past the broken gate and up the bloodied stairs, Hank kept the shotgun level before him as he moved slowly but surely.

  The air in the stairwell was heavy with the copper tang of blood. Behind him, Cato heard Wexell fighting back bile as they checked their steps, but to his credit the young man managed to keep his lunch down. That was the last thing they needed at this point—the smell of fresh vomit mingling with old blood. Small favors, indeed.

  The radio room was little more than a cubicle, its small size magnifying the horror that had occurred there. The radio unit itself was an impressively large piece of tech, dwarfing the headless body of its operator sprawled on the floor before it. His head was nowhere to be found, though a good amount of what had once been his blood was dripping from a sizable stain on the ceiling.

  Hank swept the shotgun left and right, then stepped aside for Cato. “Clear.”

  The antennerae was lit up like the Red Lantern District, obviously still broadcasting, but what did Cato know about any of it? There was no on/off switch on the board, no bright red button or comically large cord to kill the broadcast mid-stream. All he saw was a bunch of levers and dials. “So, anyone know how to shut this thing down?” he wondered.

  “I think I might have an idea,” Hank said, leveling his shotgun at the terminal through the doorway. “Wanna take a step back?”

  Cato looked to Wexell, and the two of them shrugged. On balance, it seemed the best possible solution. Pinning their fingers in their ears, the two were quick to duck out of the way of the blast as Hank put an end to the broadcast.

  “There we go.”

  “Seems to have done the trick,” Wexell agreed with a smirk toward the sparking, smoking radio board.

  Cato nodded appreciatively. “Nice troubleshooting skills.”

  For his part, Hank only shrugged. “Always been a specialty of mine.”

  “All right,” Cato said. “We took care of the message. Now, let’s go find the messenger and put him down once and for all.”

  “Amen to that,” Hank agreed.

  The three men returned to the first floor after clearing the administrative area, then moved quickly and efficiently through the rest of the prison. In every area they checked, they were met with all the remnants of a fight. Clotted blood, gory remains, and, ultimately a path that went nowhere. All the trimmings.

  Finally, Cato stopped at the next intersection of corridors, and looked left, right, and ahead. “Something is seriously wrong,” he finally said.

  “Yeah,” Hank said. “No kidding. This whole situation is totally FUBAR.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Okay. So, what, then?”

  “We’ve been wrong about this whole thing from the beginning. First, about who was behind it, then about their motives. At every turn, we’ve expected them to do the obvious thing, the sensible thing, and each time they’ve surprised us. This time is no different. We expected them to break out. Instead, they dug in. Now that we’ve gotten inside and shut down the broadcast, they’re nowhere to be found. Which leaves two questions.”

  “Where did they go, and how did they escape,” Hank said.

  “Exactly.”

  There was a pall in the prison, a kind of unnerving silence that hung over them as they considered the questions at hand.

  It was Wexell who finally put it all together, his broad, open face alighting with realization. “The catacombs.”

  Cato lowered his head, shaking it with a heavy sigh and slumping shoulders. “Of course.”

  “The catacombs?” Hank asked, looking between them both. “What am I missing?”

  “It’s what it sounds like,” Cato said. “Dark, narrow, and full of bones. Prisoners whose bodies aren’t meant to be claimed.” He looked to Wexell. “Do they connect with the sewer system?”

  “Not directly, but someone on the other side could probably make it happen if they were determined enough.”

  “So, that’s how they actually broke out,” Hank said.

  Cato suddenly felt quite the fool. “Yup. Damn it, they’ve been playing us all along.”

  “Yeah, but now we’re playing the same game.”

  “Good point. Let’s go get on their level.”

  * * *

  The battle was frenzied, and yet her actions were not. Nissa had entered something of a trance-like state, all her fear and anxiety forgotten as she fought for the soul of her city. Whether it was the security of the illicit weaponry at her command or simply the strangely life-affirming thrill of killing not to be killed, she couldn’t say. Either way, all that was left was the pull of the trigger and the rifle’s murderous response.

  Her unlikely ally, on the other hand, was having the time of his life, cutting it up like some hopped-up adrenaline junkie wannabe. His maniacal, downright suicidal charge was neither encouraging nor inspiring, although it was hard to argue with the results. Indeed, it seemed almost as if he was trying to get himself killed, even if his firepower made that a statistically remote possibility. The weapons were too fierce, the ammunition too lethal for anyone erring on the side of the conventional.

  And yet, for all that, he still had one surprise for both her and the vamps. He hadn’t struck her as the type to put much thought beyond each pull of the trigger, but apparently she’d been wrong. A rare misread on her part.

  Nissa had already tossed the rifle and was going for her sidearm when her ally reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small orb. Nissa’s eyes went spotlight wide the moment she saw it. He grinned wryly, confirming her realization.

  A solar flare.

  With a quick flick of his wrist, apparently activating it, her ally rolled the unassuming orb toward the last of the surg
ing vampires. Too late, they recognized the device for what it was and scrambled for the cover of the roadblock they had left behind.

  They never had a chance.

  The flare reached its terminus, exploding with a light so pure and blinding that Nissa could still see it against the backs of her eyelids even after she turned away. When she looked back, all that was left of the dozen or so vamps who had been charging them were the smoldering piles of ash and clothing.

  “Whoo!” her ally hollered, throwing his arms out and reveling in the destruction he had wrought. “Now, that’s what I call a block party! How about you, honey?”

  Nissa’s lips peeled back, revealing a disgusted sneer. She held her weapon in a semi-ready stance. “You are one seriously sick individual.”

  “Oh, come on. That was epic! And you totally kicked ass, by the way. Don’t tell me you didn’t love Bertha over there. Isn’t she a beaut?”

  Ugh, he had actually named the rifles? “Place your hands behind your head and get down on your knees,” she instructed him.

  The man’s grin faded. The realization that he was about to be rearrested was slowly asserting itself, pushing through the bloodlust he had been practically mainlining up to that point. Instinct was kicking in, telling him to choose one: fight or flight. She felt reasonably certain which of the two he would choose.

  “I’m not a big fan of where this is going,” he said, an uncomfortable edge creeping into his tone.

  “I said, put your hands behind your head and get down on your knees.”

  “So, it’s going to be like that, huh? After my ‘illegal weaponry’ and I saved both of our asses?”

  “I’m afraid so. Do I need to repeat myself a second time?”

  “Nah. I think I got it.” He started to raise his hands.

  “Don’t do it,” she mouthed to him, her finger hovering inside her pistol’s trigger guard.

  Halfway through the gesture, he went for his weapon. Nissa’s was up in a flash, and two quick shots caught him in the midsection.