by Jeff Seats
She smiled resolutely. Images of the O'Neils and Jenna and Kelvin and even Richard appeared in her mind. “About to ask you the same thing." Her grin was genuine, but it masked the tight feeling in her gut. This situation far surpassed what could be defined as her comfort level, but she knew that she had to try.
—— CONFLICT ——
AS SOON AS the last boot of the last team member stepped off the loading ramp, the Osprey lifted off the ground to go into mission-support mode and hover over the town until needed. If needed it would set down and be available for immediate evac. If needed they would call in for further support and lay down covering fire. If needed they would land when the dust of battle had settled and return the bodies of the team back home for burial, which was a concept that did not precisely apply since the remains brought back would not be the body in a bag but ashes in a can.
If you were killed by a vamp while on a mission, CSC protocol called for your body to be decapitated, a wooden stake driven into your heart, and then burned and the ashes sprinkled with holy water. If you were merely wounded, everyone in the CSC knew that protocol called for a silver bullet to the heart after which would follow the decapitation, burning, and holy water routine.
Wounded or dead you were returned to base in a canister big enough to hold your ashes. A grateful country thanks you for your sacrifice though none of your family would ever be told why or how that sacrifice was made.
Craig and Liz looked across the park at Vladimir and his rogue vampires who were lined up ready to fight. The distraction of A2 taking out those two vamps drew both sides attention. Liz saw for the first time how good the Action Team was.
Ortega and Ellingson were impressive in their surprise encounter with the vamps. The smoothness and efficiency of their actions made it look like killing vampires was easy. It kind of encouraged her, giving her a bit of strength in a situation that was rapidly looking like she might have been selected for the wrong job. She had thought that maybe she would get assigned to some sort of secret organization, like maybe special forces, CIA, FBI maybe even Secret Service or something black-ops-like but herding vampires? That was not on the radar. And the way vampire bodies imploded when killed...not expecting that at all.
Craig marveled at how his two team members killed the vamps in a no-nonsense, business-like manner. "Wow," he said softly in admiration. Craig had been with this team for several years and knew their capabilities but fortune was with them and they never had to show off their skills, not to this extent and at least not in front of him.
Vamp Town had been a relatively quiet assignment not like sites Delta and Epsilon. The lycans were a pretty reasonable lot, but full moons brought out the animal in them. All joking aside, Action Teams had spent more time dealing with those wolves than they ever had to with the vamps. The lycans often required force to subdue them and not always were the Action Teams left unharmed. Craig's mind flashed on the images of Swanson getting his ticket punched while sitting comfortably back in Control-West whining about how bored he was. That was a real professional moment for him to be proud of. Shit!
Next to him, St. Jean muttered in awe at the performance, “Pretty slick."
"Yeah, gotta get her to teach me how to use a katana when we get back." Sue Todd said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Craig returned to the issue at hand; the vamps were lined up ready to take on the Action Team and they appeared to have the numbers on their side to do it. "Sergeant St. Jean, what do you see?" He never messed with the night vision equipment which he felt was just too cumbersome. Instead, he relied on others for their input.
Sergeant St. Jean redirected his NVGs over to the vamp line. "Well, they're kind of like us sir. Frozen. How Ortega and Ellingson handled those two must have surprised them more than us, but they as hell look ready for a fight."
“This is not going to be good,” Evers commented in a business-like tone making sure that he had a chambered gas canister ready to fire from his Milkor riot gun.
“Well, they are stronger,” Craig replied out of the side of his mouth.
“Just a bit sir. And Vlad has a look of rage on his face. He's talking, and his blood sucking pals are listening.” St. Jean commented. As St. Jean continued to observe Vlad threw his head back, the tendons in his jaw loosened as his mouth opened to an inhuman size and he let out an eerie, high-pitched, screeching howl that the whole world could hear.
“Ah, Sir...” Todd said.
“Shit, I heard.”
“They heard it in Portland for God’s sake.” St. Jean had to add.
“No, not that,” Todd continued. “Vlad has two of the passengers, but he's ignoring them because of us. They're escaping.”
“I hope they find a safe place.” To the rest of the team, Craig said, “Time to do our jobs. Agent Adams come with me. We need to cross the park and get to Vlad.”
Liz had one hand on her 9mm the other was firmly around the handle of the wooden knife that Craig gave her. If this were a cartoon she would take a loud gulp, Adam's apple overly exaggerated rising and lowering in her throat, as she went into the park with Craig but this was life, and her mouth was too dry even to try to swallow. Gulping would come later, preferably bourbon, rocks, and water, optional.
Craig took the first step into the park, Liz followed a step behind to his right. To Craig's left was Sergeant St. Jean while Todd and Evers walked next to Liz on her right. They were a determined group of fighters heading towards their appointment with destiny. Liz could not help but notice a similarity with her father’s favorite western, My Darling Clementine which portrayed the Earps and Doc Holliday slowly walking down that dusty Tombstone street to meet the Clantons at the O.K. Corral. She hoped that the outcome for them was as positive as it was for those characters of that film. Ahead, the vampires entered the park and approached the Action Team. Between the two groups stood a gazebo and an expanse of dried out grass.
About half way into the park Ortega and Ellingson joined up with the rest of the team. Then all hell broke loose. The vampires did not hold back any further, and they flew towards the Action Team with fierce rancor.
Craig's mind was fixed on the one target that could put a stop to all this, so he steered a path around the advancing vampires; knowing that eliminating Vladimir from the equation was more important to the success of this action than the additional two bodies that he and Liz would add to the fight. If Vlad got away, it wouldn't matter much if he and his team survived or not. The delicate balance between humans and vamps that the treaty created would forever be altered, and an unsuspecting world would have to, again, live in fear of the night. Craig had hoped that Alexei would have arrived by now and maybe had put an end to all this before it turned ugly but the gunfire coming from his people's weapons wiped that thought out of his mind, and no matter how soon Alex came it wouldn't be soon enough to keep people from dying. Now he had to act on his own. Just what he was going to do was a question yet unanswered, but he knew that he had to do something. So he marched on towards Vlad, tuning out the battle, staying focused on the task that was his to attend.
««« ‡ »»»
THE BATTLE EXPLODED around the two agents as though an accelerant had been poured onto an open flame. From Liz's perspective, the fight was a whirlwind of motion. From her perspective, the vamps seemed to have an unfair advantage. They appeared to have an ability to defy gravity by turning into black wisps of vapor and then materializing in a different location to resume their attack. But Liz was quickly learning on the job that the Action Team was not without its strengths.
Silver bullets were very effective in stopping a charging vamp when hit anywhere on the body similar to the intent of the Colt .45 automatic when it was first developed. Place a slug from that gun anywhere into a charging, machete wielding, Filipino freedom fighter and he’d go down every time. Unlike the lead of a .45, however, silver would not knock down a fanged assailant, but it would stall his charge, and if one was fast, there was just enough time to pu
t another slug into its heart before the vamp reached you. Then it was lights out, implosion time. Liz saw one vampire go down that way.
Keeping up with Craig was hard. He moved through the battle with little regard to what was going on around him. It was as if his intense focus on getting to Vladimir gave him a cloak of invisibility or supernatural protective armor. The fighting did not distract him from his end goal.
Liz, on the other hand, could not keep from looking at the fight. She had never been in battle. All simulations and war games she had participated in were not real and, in any case, would not have prepared her for watching a human being torn apart by three vampires. What was her name? Not the one with the sword but the other. Liz never really got to meet anyone, and there she was, torn to shreds with three vamps, crowing over their kill tantamount to some weird victory cry. Todd. It was Todd who just got taken down. Oh my God! Liz realized in horror. She looked for Craig, but he had already cleared the battlefield and was far ahead of her beyond the gazebo.
“Shit!” Liz yelled feeling the wisp of a vamp brush through her hair as it flew over her head. She ducked out of instinct and then looked to see it materialize next to one of the Action Team. Her eyes fast focused on his name patch, Timmons. The vamp landed too close for him to use his AR, so he quickly dropped the rifle and pulled two Bowie knives out from sheathes attached to his legs. The sharp blades flashed as he swung around parrying the vamp's initial attack with its long, sharp nails. Then Timmons used the knife in his left hand, point out in front of him like a fencer, and lunged towards the vamp. The vampire darted away from Timmons thrust but did not see the other blade as Timmons brought up his right hand in an upward sweeping arc slashing across the vamp's forearm. The vamp screamed in agony as the blade sliced through the skin on his arm drawing blood. The blades of these knives were a polished silver alloy so the cut opened a vaporous wound. The vamp did his wispy thing and popped up behind Timmons who anticipated the move spinning around in a one-eighty to his right with the knife in his left hand pointing out, leading the turn.
Vampires might be extraordinarily strong and centuries old with teeth able to rip a throat open, but trained fighters they were not, and Timmons’ move surprised this one as the tip of the leading blade embedded into the vamp’s stomach. At the same time as the left knife entered the vampire’s gut, Timmons brought up the other knife and drove the point straight into the vamp's heart. Surprise washed over the vampire's face as his body convulsed and started to erupt towards an explosion only to implode on itself into a heap of burbling stew.
Then everything turned into a blur as Liz saw the fight around her become a super, fast-speed, mix of colors and motion all blending into a Jackson Pollock painting of lines and streaks interspersed with red splashes of blood. She found herself, immobilized, standing in the middle of the calm eye of a shit storm. Her heart beat quickened. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. Her increased blood flow brought a warm flush to her face. Is this what panic feels like? She wondered.
Liz had lost all comprehension of the flow of time with the action boiling around her moving at an alarming pace. She slipped on something and looked down; her boot was in a muck of some still vaporous vampire entrails.
Then the swirling blur of activity solidified, and the fight resumed at normal speed. She could not tell how many of the Action Team remained standing. Trying to judge the numbers of vampires still in the fray was equally hidden from her, but it was abundantly evident that the humans were surrounded and about to be overrun.
Liz turned her head to a sound. Wump. Wump. Wump. It was the guy with the Milkor firing the aerosolized garlic canisters into the crowd of vamps. The garlic vapor had a debilitating effect on many of them allowing the Action Team to fall back to the gazebo; the only defensible position around.
The smell of garlic had a crippling effect on Liz too. She gagged trying to catch her breath and doubled over from the urge to vomit. Then the tangy sweet smell dissipated as a breeze blew across the park. Liz's eyes cleared, and she saw the guy with the Milkor fumbling for his sidearm. He had remained behind the team firing off the canisters allowing the rest to make it to the gazebo. Now he was alone in a sea of vamps, and one was attacking him. He squeezed off a couple of rounds hitting the vamp, causing her to stumble back, but not killing her.
The wounded vampire quickly shook off the bullet hits and moved to attack him again. He fired another round, but it missed. Then, as if the vampire had no injuries at all, it morphed into its wispy, vaporous mode and materialized right at the poor guy's neck. The vamp opened her mouth; her fangs looked impossibly long to fit in such a petite space. Moving at lightning fast speed, she took a large bite out of the man’s neck. A gush of blood erupted from the gaping wound, and she watched this team member drop to his knees, hand on his throat, surprise on his face. With the man down the vampire found another target and moved on, this was not the time to gorge there was still a battle to win.
Liz could only watch the vampire pounce on the CSC fighter. It happened so quickly that she had no time to react. Her perception of the attack was that it took place in slow motion; every gruesome detail was played out before her. She turned to flee the carnage but found that the raging battle had become a slow motion barrier—a freeze-frame tableau—keeping her from escape. Any direction she turned there was a wall of frozen humans and vamps, in the throes of killing one another, surrounding them creating a hollow spot in a sea of pain and spurting blood leaving Liz and the wounded man as the only ones moving in real-time.
She and the wounded man seemed to be the only ones moving in real-time. Liz turned but the wall of frozen humans and vamps, in the throes of killing one another, surrounded them creating a hollow spot in a sea of pain and spurting blood. The battle had become nothing but a muted background tableau, a barrier keeping her from escape.
««« ‡ »»»
AFTER MAKING IT beyond the center of the battle, Craig turned to see if Liz was still with him. Fuck! Where is she? He asked himself when he didn't see her. Now was not the time for a newbie to get lost. He quickly looked left then right to double check and still she was not with him. Then he turned around and looked back towards the middle of the park where his team was locked in fierce fighting with the vampires. It was there that he saw Liz through the fast-paced blur of the action. She was kneeling next to a fallen team member. Who was that? Craig couldn't tell from his vantage point. All he could see was Liz and the wounded team member. He saw them moving in real-time while the battle swirled around them as though the combatants were all on a super dose of speed; their frantic movements of attack and defense became a smear of color and motion that turned transparent, enabling Craig to watch her and the fallen teammate.
««« ‡ »»»
LIZ LOOKED DOWN at the wounded man lying on the ground at her feet. The speed of the attack and the severity of his neck wound left her feeling unsteady. When the man coughed, blood gurgled up out of his mouth and spurted out the gash in his neck at the same time. She blinked. The reality of the situation came rushing back. All this was real. Liz knelt next to the man and tried to close the wound with her hands, but the gushing blood could not be stopped; each heart beat sent out a new spray. What do I do? Come on! What should I do? Treat for shock? Direct pressure? Tourniquet? No stupid a neck wound. An artery. Shit!
And this was the moment when she realized that a severed artery in the neck had no treatment, no solution, no way to fix it. This man was going to die. She rested back on her haunches and wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her sleeve. A feeling of helpless, despair flooded her mind. Then she heard the voice of Master Sergeant Terry. "Adams! What in the hell are you doing? Feeling sorry for yourself? You have a man down. What are you going to do soldier?"
Liz's focus returned to her fallen comrade and with renewed vigor she attempted to staunch the bleeding wound in his neck. The man turned his head and looked up into her eyes. He coughed. Blood bubbled out of his mouth. He coughed
again. "Stop. N...nothing you can do to save..." The man tried to say. With an extreme effort that was writ on his face, he grabbed her wrist pulling her hand away from his neck and stared into Liz’s eyes, pleading. "Don’t let me become one of them!" He said coughing up more blood. "You have to finish me. Please!"
What was he asking her to do? Does he want me to kill him? The thought shocked her. She looked into his eyes, and they widened, begging for her to end his misery and to release him from the potential of becoming a blood drinking, creature of the night.
The man coughed again. “Please...”
Liz stood and pulled out her 9mm. The man grabbed the barrel and directed it over his heart. He looked at Liz; eyes thanking her, and he nodded. Now.
Liz began to perspire. Her heart rate picked up. She held out her arm towards the injured man his hand still guiding her to the target. And she pulled the trigger.
««« ‡ »»»
CRAIG WATCHED LIZ aim her gun at the fallen man and pull the trigger. The man’s body lurched from the impact of the bullet. Then the frenzied action of battle resumed in real-time, and Craig lost Liz in the heated blur of the fight.
He didn't hesitate. Craig charged back into the storm to get Liz. The battle still raging. A vamp in a John Deer hat charged him. Without hesitation, Craig pumped him with a silver slug in the heart like an enraged James Bond and continued with determination towards his partner. When he reached Liz, she was still standing over the team member's body, gun in hand hanging to her side, oblivious to the desperate fight around her.
“I didn’t know his name…”
“Evers. Sergeant Eugene Evers. I’ll tell you about him later but...” Craig grabbed her shoulder. “I need you. NOW. Copy?”