by M. D. Massey
Calypso’s voice echoed from the darkness. “You’re in no condition to attack, so I assume you’re here to parley.” I looked up and saw her shadow in the gloom of the tunnel. She cocked her head and tsked. “You’ve killed my offspring—a shame. They’d been with me for more than a century. But I can always make more.”
She remained hidden in the shadow of the tunnel, back where a rifle round couldn’t reach her. I needed to draw her out in the center of the shaft, where Kara could take her shot. Another wave of nausea had filled my mouth with saliva, so I spat on the corpses beneath me, then rolled over to sit against the concrete elevator shaft.
“You don’t seem to be too upset with me about killing your children.”
She stood still as a statue in the darkness, but her voice carried the weight of her indifference. “As I said, I can make more. My kind don’t tend to be very sentimental about our offspring. They are somewhat expendable.”
“Yet it seems you took the death of your brother very, very hard indeed.”
She stared at me in the darkness, silent. “You taunt me, perhaps hoping for a quick death. Your time will come soon enough.”
I whispered almost inaudibly, knowing she’d be able to hear. “I did come to strike a bargain, Calypso. I can give you Kara. She’s the one who killed your brother. I’d have been happy to have left him in peace.”
“Pfah. You lie. I’ve searched for her since my brother passed, and yet she’s eluded me at every step.”
“I’ve seen her—recently, in fact. Take a sniff, and tell me if your senses deceive you.”
She inhaled deeply and slowly, like a sommelier taking in the bouquet of a fine wine. “You’ve been near one of Piotr’s brood. You speak the truth.”
“I do. She came to me at night, and told me she’d been watching over me,” I whispered. “She says she’s tired of her unlife, and ready to end it to save me.”
“So, she’s here,” the ancient vampire hissed. “How interesting. And she wishes to trade her life for yours?”
Kara dropped to the bottom of the elevator shaft next to me. “I do.”
What the hell? This wasn’t the plan.
Calypso’s laugh was filled with bitterness and hate. “You’ll watch him die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She whirred across the space between them, snatching up a hooked piece of rebar and stabbing Kara through the chest, pinning her to the wall. It was done so fast that if I hadn’t had an enhanced perception speed, I would have missed it. One second she was standing in the tunnel, and the next Kara was hanging by that piece of steel.
It was all I could do to stand there, stunned by this turn of events. For one, I didn’t think it was possible to stab a length of rebar into reinforced concrete. Second, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Kara had dropped into the elevator shaft with me. She was supposed to be high above us with that Barrett fifty-cal, waiting to send Calypso back where she belonged. And third, I didn’t see how I could hope to turn things around, considering how unbelievably fast Calypso moved. Even with my enhanced reflexes, there was no way I could match her speed.
But maybe, just maybe, there was a chance in hell to salvage this thing.
“Go ahead then, bitch. End it,” I whispered, before I screamed at the top of my lungs, a hate-filled roar that came from the hidden and primal depths of my being. “End it, damn it!”
Calypso regarded Kara as she wriggled and squirmed in agony, like a bug pinned to the ground by a cruel child. She ran her fingers lazily across the sword handle, then turned her eyes on me.
“I intend to, hunter. But not quickly, or easily. No, I will drain you slowly and painfully from a thousand cuts, licking your life from you a drop at a time. All the while, your beloved will watch helplessly, then she’ll bear witness while I raise you from the dead as a ghoul to do my bidding.” She smiled, baring her fangs. “And then I’ll kill her as well.”
Calypso was on me in a fraction of a second, barely the time it might take to twitch an eye. She grabbed me by the upper arms so I couldn’t struggle, and snapped her head forward so her lips were against the bare skin of my neck. She took another long sniff, and her cold dead breath chilled my flesh as she spoke.
“Mmmm, yes… You smell different today, hunter. The scent of death no longer lingers within you. Let us see how you taste, hmmm?”
She sank her teeth into the side of my neck and blood flowed freely, hot and wet down my shoulder and chest. Calypso drank greedily from me, then clapped a hand over the wound to staunch the blood flow. Even so, I was already getting woozy from blood loss.
“Delicious, but I mustn’t end your life too soon, eh? I want to savor the sensation of feeling your life drain from you slowly, bit by bit. Then, I’ll…”
The vampire stopped mid-sentence, and her face contorted in pain. “Something’s not right—your blood, it’s tainted!”
Calypso dropped me to the ground, and blood began flowing from my neck again, soaking my shirt in a spreading dark stain. “They’re called antibodies, bitch. How do you think I survived a deader bite without getting turned? All those centuries on earth, and you still skipped science class. Sucks for you,” I whispered.
Blood continued to flow from my wound, and now it was staining the ground beneath me. I tried clamping a hand over it to stop the bleeding, or to at least slow it down, but she’d bitten me deep.
Yup, you’re going to bite the bullet on this one, I thought. May as well make it count. I reached down for my sidearm, fumbling the draw with my slick, bloody fingers. Calypso had staggered against the wall opposite me, but I still thought I could get a clean head shot… if I didn’t pass out first.
The witch looked at me with hatred in her eyes. “I’ll still kill you,” she rasped, “before I die. I swear it.”
I managed to get the gun in my hand, just as she was pushing herself off the wall. Her skin and mouth were smoldering now, everywhere my blood touched her. Although it was clear that she’d been badly compromised by the antibodies in my blood, she was determined to end my existence. She lurched toward me, closing the distance between us step by agonizing step.
Nausea and blood loss were doing a job on me, and my vision was fading. I tried to steady the barrel of the gun, but it kept moving around on me. Or maybe Calypso’s head was moving around on me—I couldn’t be certain. I fired once, and the round pinged off the wall. Again, I squeezed the trigger, and I missed. Then a third time, and a fourth, but I barely managed to graze her shoulder. I emptied the magazine at her, and my rounds hit everywhere but where it counted.
Then she was standing over me, and I was pulling the trigger on an empty chamber, with the slide locked back. She batted the gun away, almost drunkenly, and grabbed me by the neck with both hands. As she lifted me off the ground, I smiled.
“I won,” I whispered.
“But I have the last laugh,” she rasped.
She began to squeeze, and I felt the vertebrae and connective tissue in my neck shift and pop. Blackness began to close in from the periphery of my vision, until all I saw was the smoldering wreck that was left of her mouth, split into a leer that said I’d triumphed, but at great cost.
Then, her head exploded as the boom of a large-bore rifle echoed in the confines of the elevator shaft. Calypso’s body collapsed, and mine with it. I fell in a heap next to her headless corpse, and slowly craned my head to look at where Kara had been pinned to the wall just moments before.
But in her place now was Donnie, stabbed through the chest by that length of rebar. He stood there examining his filthy, raptor-like nails, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Hey there, Scratch… would it hurt your feelings if I told you you’re not looking so good?”
Kara landed lightly at the bottom of the shaft, dropping the Barrett as she knelt beside me. She tore open a nylon carrier pouch on her belt and pulled out a green plastic packet. She ripped that open to reveal a pressure dressing, which she applied to
the wound on my neck.
“Careful… with my blood.”
“Ssshh, I’ll be fine. This gauze contains a wound-clotting agent. It should stop the bleeding.”
“Hell of a switch you two pulled,” I murmured. “Could have told me beforehand, you know.”
She shook her head. “Your reactions needed to be real. Calypso knew you were trying to deceive her; vampires are supernatural lie detectors. We can smell the hormones your body releases, hear your heartbeat, and see when your breath rate increases. Sorry, but I had to keep you in the dark to make this work.”
“Why’d it take you so long to take the shot?” I asked.
“I had to make it count, so I waited to make sure she was mostly incapacitated before I pulled the trigger.”
“Well, I can’t argue with your logic. But next time, I get to pull the trigger, and you get to be the one getting their neck snapped.”
She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “Like you’d ever let that happen.”
It took me a few days to heal up from the punishment I’d received at the hands of the vamps… and my own cockamamie schemes. Fortunately, my body was healing a hell of a lot faster now that the Doc’s vaccine had helped my system fight off the deader venom.
As for the group, casualties had been minimal—mostly because everyone had stuck to the plan during the attack. Gabby and Bobby had tried to follow me in, just as I’d predicted, but Samson had caught them and nipped that in the bud. Once the fight was over, the wolves pulled me out of the shaft, and then they killed every sleeping vampire they found.
All except one, that is. We let that one live, although we made it look like an oversight. Why? Because we needed to make sure the Dallas coven knew where to find us.
“How long you think it’ll take her to get back to Dallas?” I asked Kara. She was sitting in a chair next to me, in a room on the lab level of the Facility. I didn’t think the group would be keen on the idea of having a vamp underground with us, so I’d had the Doc sneak her in.
“On foot? A week, at least. Less, if she manages to hijack a vehicle.”
“Unlikely. We found where Calypso had hidden her trucks, and tucked them away on the base where no one is going to find them.” I stroked the five-day beard on my chin. “Still, it doesn’t give us much time to do what needs to be done. Did you sift through the intel we recovered?”
“I did, with the Doc’s help. The codes were there, although it remains to be seen whether or not they’ll get us in.”
I yawned. “We’ll take the rabbi and Josef with us, just in case. If we can’t get in the place through conventional means, Josef can just bust his way through. Either that, or we can dig our way in with heavy equipment, with all the diesel we found in the back of their trucks.”
“You think it’ll work?” she asked.
“It has to. This is the only way I can think of to take those dickheads out in one fell swoop. We have to end it, Kara.”
“And we will, Scratch. We will. I just…”
I took her hands in mine. They were cold, and way too unyielding for human flesh, but I didn’t care. After everything that had happened, I’d realized that deep down inside she was the same Kara I’d always known.
“You’re wondering what happens after, right?”
She nodded.
“I’m sticking with you, Kara, to the bitter end. Maybe we find a cure for your… condition. Or maybe we just do like I said and live happily ever after. I still have the ranch, and it’s secluded enough that we could hide out there indefinitely.”
“And when humans come for me? What will you do then?”
“You still have your humanity intact, Kara. You’re different now, but you’re still you.”
“I’m me, Scratch, but I’m not human anymore—not by any stretch. And if there was a cure for vampirism, the Doc would have told you by now.”
I squeezed her hands. “Trust me, we can make it work. But first, we just have to finish this one last thing. I can’t leave them until I know they’re going to be alright.”
“To the bitter end, then,” she said, smiling and inadvertently revealing her too-long canines.
“You can bank on it. I’m not going anywhere, unless it means following you.”
A cough from outside the door told me the Doc wanted to speak to us, but she didn’t want to intrude.
“Come on in, Doc.”
The Doc opened the door and entered the room, shutting it behind her even though no one was likely to be within listening range… except for Gabby, of course. But the Doc wouldn’t have been here to discuss matters unless her niece was busy elsewhere.
“I take it Gabby is busy preparing, along with everyone else?” I asked.
The Doc nodded. “Everything seems to be going as planned. We’re pumping ground water into the long-term storage tanks, to ensure they’re full of clean water. We’ve sent out two-person teams to hunt for game, and we’ve organized a kitchen crew to preserve the meat. Others are scavenging in the northern part of the city and on base for canned goods, and we have teams looking for fresh produce at farms to the west and north.”
“Did anyone contact Margie and Bernie?”
She pursed her lips. “Yes, but we had a hard time getting them to come. Gabby and Bobby finally convinced them it was in their best interests.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s some good news. How about the preparations at the old hospital?”
“We formed a detail made up of ’thropes and humans, and they’re working to make it look like we’re using it for our base now. Within a few days, it’ll look like we’re living there.”
I closed my eyes, bringing up the rest of my to-do list from memory. “And the entrances to the Facility are all well-hidden?”
She nodded. “All except for the ones we’ll need to access when we make our escape.”
I pulled myself up higher in the bed, using my elbows for support. “Alright then.” I rubbed my hands together and gave them my best shit-eating grin. “Let’s go steal ourselves a nuclear warhead.”
TIME
The trip to Amarillo was mostly uneventful. Our group consisted of myself, Kara, the two knuckleheads, the rabbi and his golem, and Sledge. Colin stayed behind, just in case more vamps showed up. He was sore about it, but I felt better about having him and the Pack looking after everyone. Everyone who was left, that was.
We drove at night—or rather, Kara drove at night—in blackout mode, to avoid drawing much attention from humans who might want to get their own working military transport truck to drive around. The damned thing was loud as hell, so it attracted deaders like the dickens, but Kara sent out her vampire radar signal, and that mostly kept them away. The biggest issue we had was making it through pile-ups, but between Josef, Bobby, and Sledge, we were able to clear each roadblock without a hassle.
I rode with Kara in the cab, since no one else seemed comfortable riding shotgun with her. Besides, I’d missed her company. We’d lived together on and off for years, but hell if I didn’t realize how much I needed her ’til she was gone. We spoke at length regarding what she’d been doing since we’d parted ways in Austin, what it was like to be a vampire, and the career she’d had as a nuclear physicist before the War. It was enlightening, to say the least.
As it turned out, we still had a lot more in common than I would have guessed.
The trip was long—an eight-hour drive on clear roads at highway speeds before the War—and it gave us plenty of time to catch up along the way. We spent the first day resting at an abandoned farm near the halfway point outside of Flat Top, Texas. The scene around the farm indicated that a huge roving herd of deaders had been through recently, killing everything in sight. The farmhouse had nearly been pushed off its foundations by the deader swarm, and vegetation had been trampled in a half-mile wide swath that traversed the countryside as far as the eye could see.
Inside the house, there was gore everywhere. From what I could tell, none o
f the inhabitants had survived being bitten, since they’d been ripped to shreds. Small comfort, that—but at least the poor folks weren’t sentenced to decades of roaming the plains of Texas until their legs wore down to nubs.
The downside was that the house was a wreck, and unsafe to boot. So, we pulled the truck in the metal barn, which was still mostly intact, and set a watch to make sure no one snuck up on us while we let Kara sleep. The rest of us slept in shifts, and outside of the odd deader, we rested undisturbed. That evening, we loaded up and continued our trek north.
It wasn’t until we got close to Panhandle, just northeast of Amarillo, when Kara alerted me to the bad news. She pulled to a stop at around 4:00 a.m. or so, on a highway rise where we had a clear view of the land ahead. In the dark under starlight and moonlight, her vision was as sharp as mine was in daytime, so she was the first to spot them.
Kara turned off the engine and tapped me on the arm. “Scratch, look.”
She pointed over the dash and off to the horizon. I couldn’t see much, despite having pseudo-werewolf vision from the Doc’s serum. The changes allowed me to see in very low-light conditions, but they did nothing to enhance my ability to see at a distance.
“I don’t see anything. What is it, punters? Another damned road block?”
“No, nothing that simple. Listen.”
I listened, and soon realized our predicament. Their moans were a low roar in the night, background noise that had blended with the clatter of the truck’s diesel engine. I was only noticing it now because the engine was silent, save for a few clicks and pings from it slowly cooling down in the night air.
I pulled out a pair of binoculars and opened the door of the truck, stepping out and climbing up on the hood to get a good luck.