by P. T. Hylton
“The ship will need repairs, if this works. At the very least.”
Twenty minutes later, the team was flying just south of Columbus. Alex continued to watch the radar, but there was nothing on it. “Damn it. She must be out of range.”
Owl slowed the ship. “That doesn’t seem right. They would have to have been flying full throttle to stay out of our range. Jessica spotted them moving south, which means they were moving perpendicular to our route, not away from us. They should be on our radar.”
“Well, they aren’t.” Alex turned the tablet she was watching to face Owl.
“I really wanted to kick Maryana’s ass tonight,” Ed said. “Taking her out at night would have been the icing on the cake.”
“Maybe she landed,” Jaden offered. “There are several cities south of Columbus. Cincinnati, Lexington, and Louisville. She could have landed at any of them before we arrived.”
“Way to know your geography,” Owl said, with a grin. “I may recruit you to provide interesting facts for the next mission.”
“I did live in the old world for a long time. I knew my way around it quite well.”
Alex thought a moment. “Owl, take us up, so we can get the most range out of the radar. Put us between those cities and just hover. If we get lucky, she’ll make a move before morning.”
Owl flew the ship to the approximate midpoint and held it there. When the ship was in place, Chuck took over the pilot’s position. The crew waited for two hours. Then Alex shot bolt upright. “I’ve got something! Look.” She turned the tablet towards Chuck.
Chuck brought the image up on his display screen. “They are coming out of Louisville. Hold on tight. For this to work, we have to get to them before they know what’s happening.”
Alex went to the back of the ship. “Is everyone tied off and ready?” The team gave a thumbs up as Alex clipped her harness on. She looked back at Chuck. “Can you handle this?”
“Let’s hope so.” He aimed for the dot on the radar and accelerated the ship.
In a few minutes, they were almost upon the away ship. It was moving much more slowly than they were, and it was only a few hundred feet off the ground. Chuck yelled back to the hold, “Get ready to hit the door.”
The team moved into position. Ed stood with his hand over the button that opened the cargo door. Owl and Jaden waited in front of the closed door, each wearing a jet pack.
Jaden yelled to Chuck, “Get us as close as you can.”
“But don’t crash into their ship,” Owl added.
Chuck concentrated as they rapidly closed in on the away ship. They were coming in from behind and above it. He leveled out less than fifty meters above the ship, matching its speed. “Now!”
Ed hit the button and the door opened. The cargo hold rumbled as the wind rushed in.
Jaden leapt through the cargo door before it was fully open, and Owl followed. The ship below must have spotted them, because it abruptly turned starboard, but Jaden managed to land on one of the wings. He slammed a knife into the wing, using all his vampire strength, and used it to hold on.
Owl had to use her jet pack to compensate for the ship’s new angle. She caught the far wing and buried her knife into it a foot from the edge. She clung to the hilt as her body flapped in the wind.
Jaden reached into his pack and pulled out a cutter with his free hand. Fighting the wind, he placed it exactly where Owl had told him, cutting into one of the electric motors propelling the ship. The motor shut down with a loud click. One down; three to go.
As he crawled across the wing toward the location of the second motor, the ship banked hard to port. He held onto his knife, keeping himself from tumbling off of the wing. He looked over and was glad to see that Owl had managed to stay on, as well.
Owl had one hand on her knife and the cutter in the other. She dragged the cutter over the wing, fashioning a makeshift handhold. Then she stowed the cutter and grabbed the handhold, shifting the knife to a better position. The ship banked again, starboard this time, and she was almost thrown off. She held tight until the ship leveled out, then she went back to work.
The moment she finished with the second motor, she heard a muffled blast from inside the ship. She turned and saw a Twisted pointing a rifle at the window. He was bleeding, and the window had a small crack. Owl couldn’t help but laugh. He clearly hadn’t realized that the window was bulletproof before shooting it point blank, but he knew now.
“That’s all of them!” Jaden shouted to Owl. “On my signal!”
As if in response to his words, the nose angled downward, sending the ship into a dive.
“Now!” Jaden shouted.
The two vampires leapt off the ship and plummeted toward the ground. Owl stretched out her arms, gritting her pointed teeth as she freefell. When she was about two-hundred feet above the ground, she engaged her jet pack, carefully slowing her fall. To her left, she saw Jaden do the same.
The away ship was still careening wildly downward. As it reached the ground, it tore through a small stand of trees and skidded along the hillside, Owl winced, imagining the extent of the damage to her beloved ship. Jaden and Owl landed next to the ship, drawing their weapons, even as their feet touched the ground.
As they approached, the side door burst open and two Twisted jumped out. They lunged through the air, and Owl readied herself for the attack.
Gunfire erupted from overhead. Alex and Ed leaned out through the cargo door of the transport ship, firing rifles at the Twisted attackers. Neither reached Jaden and Owl alive. Another Twisted jumped out of the craft. As he landed, he raised his assault rifle and took aim at Owl. She charged forward, her eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun, as Jaden had taught her. She anticipated the blast and flinched to the left just before the Twisted fired. She reached him before he could fire again and finished him with her knife.
Jaden and Owl dove through the away ship’s open door. Inside, they found three more Twisted. One was loading a clip into an assault rifle. Before he could ready his weapon, Jaden put a sword through his heart. The other two soldiers had been injured in the crash. One was attempting to stand, but his legs were bent at odd angles. The other had a large piece of jagged metal sticking through his abdomen. Jaden ended both of them before Owl could fire a shot.
Jaden slid his swords into their sheaths. Owl scanned the ship, dazed, trying to determine if anything was salvageable. Blood covered much of the interior.
“We’re coming in,” Alex yelled from the outside of the ship.
“It’s clear.” Owl shouted back.
Alex and Ed rushed onboard. “Did you get her?”
“No,” Jaden said, his voice cold. “She wasn’t on board. Once again, we are a step behind.”
“I don’t get it. Where the hell is she?”
“I’m not sure, but it wasn’t a total loss.” He nodded toward the half-full crate of blood packets. “We got their blood supply. And they don’t have a ship anymore.”
“I really thought that we had her.” Alex sighed. “Owl, you’re not going to like this, but I think we’d better destroy the ship. We can’t fly it, and we don’t want to risk Maryana’s being able to fix it.”
Owl nodded sadly. She walked to the cockpit and ran her hand over the controls one last time. “Goodbye, old girl.”
Once they were outside, she watched Ed set the explosives and destroy the remains of her beloved ship.
30
Owl spent the next twenty minutes on her tablet, calculating the best rendezvous with New Haven. Alex and the rest of the team explored the nearby buildings, and they quickly confirmed what they’d suspected: the virus had already taken out the Ferals in this part of the country.
Jaden frowned as he looked down at one of the corpses. “We need to get word to Agartha at the next opportunity. They’ll want to know the virus is spreading in their direction more quickly than we’d thought.”
By the time they returned to Jaden’s transport ship, Owl had finished her c
alculations. “Well, it’s official. We have to wait for New Haven to come back around. There’s no way we’re catching them.”
“Huh,” Alex said. “How long until they pass back over?”
“Should be about sixteen hours. Late afternoon, our time.” Owl frowned at her tablet. “So, what are we supposed to do until then?”
Jaden put his hands on his hips and looked around for a moment before speaking. “I think I have an idea. Mind if we take a short flight?”
It only took them ten minutes to fly to the spot Jaden had selected. Owl set the ship down in what had once been a parking lot. The rest of the area—at least what Alex could see of it in the early morning darkness—was wilderness.
“Okay, Jaden,” Alex said. “What are we doing here?”
Jaden gestured toward the area beyond the parking lot. “Welcome, New Havenites, to the Raven Run Nature Sanctuary.”
“Uh, okay,” Chuck said.
With no further explanation, he led them away from the parking lot and into the dense woods. The sound of water came from somewhere far ahead, and a gentle breeze stirred the leaves.
“This is beautiful,” Owl said as they walked.
“I’m sure it is,” Ed grumbled. “For those of us with vampire sight. The rest of us are wandering around in the woods at night. We’re really sure the Ferals in this city are dead, Captain?”
“If not, Jaden will sense them approaching,” Alex said. She second guessed herself. “You will, right?”
Jaden chuckled. “I don’t sense any in the area. If they’re not all dead, they are hiding out somewhere far from here.” He took another few steps, then stopped. “Ah, here we are.”
Alex squinted at the area in front of Jaden, resisting the urge to turn on her headlamp, since it would ruin whatever night vision she had. After a few moments, she saw it. A small stream. “Okay. What are we supposed to do now?”
“Well, in my childhood, a very long time ago, we used to take our shoes off and soak our feet in streams like this.” He nodded toward the eastern horizon. “It’s almost morning, and we have a great view. I was thinking we could sit here and watch the sunrise.”
Without waiting for a response, he began to pull off his boots, his deformed hands struggling with the laces.
For a moment, Alex stood there, perplexed. But then she realized something. The GMT had a forced day off. On the surface. There was no mission. With the away ship destroyed, they had no way of tracking Maryana from the transport. Why not kick back and enjoy the day? She bent down, pulled off her own boots, sat on the bank, and slowly eased her bare feet into the chilly water.
“You know,” she said, “there was a time, during the early days of Fleming’s attempt at Resettlement, when I used to dream about this. Just being able to enjoy the world with no fear of what might leap out and try to eat me. It didn’t happen like I thought it would, but it is happening. The world is changing.”
The others were joining them now, sitting down and dangling their feet in the stream.
“Perhaps,” Jaden said. “Or maybe, it’s not so much changing as resetting. Becoming the way that it was always meant to be. Purging itself of the unnatural.”
“Like us?” Owl asked, the hint of a smile in her voice.
Jaden’s voice was sad when he answered. “Yes. Like us.”
They sat quietly for a while, the glow in the eastern sky growing stronger by the moment.
Ed nudged Felix. “So, is this what you thought the GMT would be like?”
The rookie shook his head. “I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I never thought I’d be sitting comfortably with my feet in a stream. I never thought I’d be captured and tortured by a vampire.”
“Hey, she only threatened torture,” Chuck said. “She didn’t actually do it.”
“Not yet,” Ed said.
Felix chuckled. “So, I guess you take the good with the bad. I’ll tell you another thing I never expected. The camaraderie. You guys are a family. And even though you didn’t want me on the team, you accepted me.”
Alex clapped him on the shoulder. “You kill enough vamps with a guy, you’re going to bond with him. It’s only natural.”
“That, or the GMT is just a bunch of softies.”
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it,” Ed said sagely.
Jaden turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Hey, Macbeth. You’re keeping up your studies.”
Ed’s face reddened. “Not because you told me to. Turns out, I just like Shakespeare.”
The sun finally broke over the horizon, and they watched in silence as the sky turned to a rich pallet of oranges, reds, and purples.
“This is what I wanted us to share,” Jaden said. “We’ve spent so long hiding from this. Me, from the sun, and you humans, from the beauty of the surface. We hid for good reasons, but now we don’t have to hide anymore.” He paused for a moment. “I fear that there are very bad times coming. This fight… Whatever it is Maryana is planning, it’s going to push us to our limits. Before that comes, I thought we could all share this moment.”
Felix chuckled. “I told you the GMT is a bunch of softies.”
They spent most of the day in the nature reserve, walking, swimming, and talking. For Alex, it was a whole new way to look at nature, not as a source of potential threats, but as a place of solace.
At mid-afternoon, they climbed back on the ship and headed to their rendezvous with New Haven. They’d had a pleasant day, but now it was time to go back to work.
31
Frank stood at George’s door for a few moments, letting the man sleep just a bit longer. It wasn’t kindness that made him hesitate; it was knowledge. He knew that as soon as he woke George, it would begin, and he really didn’t want it to begin.
He honestly didn’t know if he could handle what was coming.
Still, he had a job to do. Better to get it done.
He knocked loudly. “George, wake up.”
A moment later, the door opened, and the blurry-eyed man looked out at Frank. If he felt any alarm at seeing a vampire hovering at his door in the wee hours of the morning, he hid it well. Frank supposed that made sense. For most humans throughout history, vampires had been terrifying creatures of myth, but for the people of Agartha, they were benevolent protectors. The sight of a vampire, even in your bedroom at night, was probably comforting.
“Morning.” George glanced at the clock on his bedside table. “Well, not for two more hours yet. What’s going on?”
“Natalie sent me to get you.” He hesitated. “She wanted you to know there were no Ferals tonight. She’s decided it’s time.”
George’s expression grew serious. They’d all agreed that the lack of Ferals would be the signal they needed to prove the virus had reached them. “Okay. Let’s… I guess we’d better go, then. Thanks for letting me know.”
Frank nodded. “I’ll see you on the other side of all this. At least, I hope I will.”
George forced a smile. “I know you will.”
With that, Frank turned and left George’s door, heading toward the vampires’ sleeping chambers. Ever since the night when he’d sat in the room while Natalie, George, and Cynthia spoke with Ambassador McCready, Frank had been helping Natalie each night, instead of working with Toby in the warehouse, as he had for the past two years. Natalie appreciated his unique perspective, which was both significantly different from the other vampires and quite different from the humans. George and Cynthia found his insights on New Haven valuable. So, he’d found himself privy to some high-level meetings, including the one that had led to the formation of this plan.
George and his team had put Agartha’s air filtration system through a rigorous series of tests, and—while it appeared that it would be able to keep the virus out—they weren’t totally confident with the results. Keeping fresh air moving through Agartha had been the priority for the past one hundred and fifty years, and the repairs and upgrades to the system had all
been made with that in mind. Protection from a biological weapon, not so much. George said that, ideally, he would like to rebuild the air filtration system. But that would take time and extra supplies, neither of which they currently had. So, George had proposed an alternative solution.
While he couldn’t build an air filtration system large enough to protect the entire city, he could build a number of simpler, smaller filters. Enough to protect each of the vampires’ sleeping chambers.
The system would require the vampires to stay in their rooms, able to communicate with the outside via the intercom system, but otherwise totally isolated.
And therein lay the problem for Frank. He’d spent a century and a half in a cell. He wasn’t eager to relive the experience. When he reached his quarters, he put a hand on the door frame and leaned against it. His feet simply refused to move. He couldn’t make himself go inside.
Looking in, he could see they’d stocked his room—and presumably all the others—with a crate of fifty blood packets. If he rationed them, it would easily last him a year. They were working under the assumption that there would be a cure for the virus by then. If not, they could have the improved air filtration system in place, along with testing, to make sure that none of the human residents were carrying the virus. At least, that was the hope.
Still, it seemed like a situation that could easily deteriorate.
“A little pre-quarantine nerves?” a voice said.
“Huh?” He spun and saw Natalie standing behind him. “Oh, hi. Yeah, I guess. It’s just that the whole living-in-a-cage thing didn’t work out so well for me last time.”
“No, I suppose it didn’t.” A smile crossed her face. “Though, you are still alive a century and a half later, so it’s not all bad.”
Frank couldn’t even muster a polite smile in response.
Natalie’s face grew serious. “Look, I get it. You’re concerned that if you walk in there and that door closes, the humans aren’t going to be able to fix things so that we can open them again. And if it was just the humans, I might agree with you. But it’s not. We’ve got Jaden on our side. He’s been through hell to keep vampire-kind safe. I promise you, he’s not going to let us down.”