by Jeff Schanz
There’s your adrenaline, baby.
He waited several seconds but Lia didn’t react.
He remembered seeing some bags of blood in one of the cabinets. Whatever container that had Lia’s blood would have been taken to Mikhail, wherever he was, so someone else’s would have to do. He opened another cabinet, another box, and brought out a bag of blood. He hooked the tubing from Lia’s neck into the blood bag and then grabbed a nearby IV stand and hung the bag high from it. Lia now had a full dose of elixir in her system and a drip from a blood bag.
She still didn’t react. No pulse, no heartbeat.
Come on, come on. He grabbed another injector of elixir and jabbed it into her arm. Double dose. Likely, there was a reason the vials were a certain size, as maybe anything larger would cause damage, or heart attack, or something. But would it matter to a potentially dead person? Still no movement.
Brandt put his head on her chest. “Oh God, Lia. What have they done to us?”
He waited a few moments, hoping for a heartbeat, a single twitch, anything that signified there could be hope, but nothing happened.
Lia’s hair was clumped in strands across her beautiful face. He reached up and combed them away. He brushed her cold cheek with this palm. He had finally thought he could be happy, could be normal again, with this wonderful woman. Ironically, she was the opposite of normal. A few days ago he had been ready to throw his life away in guilt because everyone he cared about had died but him. And here he was again. The lone survivor.
Not this time.
“Lia, my love, listen to me. I know you’re still in there somewhere. I know you will be undead soon, if not already. And I know you don’t want to live that way. But if you do – if you change your mind and decide to stay here on earth, I will stay with you. I will do whatever you ask. Just tell me, somehow. Otherwise…” He took a deep breath. “Otherwise, I’m going to do whatever it takes to kill Mikhail and sacrifice both of us in the process. I’ll blow up this whole goddamned boat and destroy us both. I’m not going through this again. I told you before, I was not coming back without you alive. Give me a sign that you understand.” He pressed his head against her immobile chest. It was still soft. Rigor hadn't set in if it ever would with someone undead.
He hoped for some kind of psychic answer from her. Then something happened. Images suddenly flew into his mind of Mikhail and his dinosaur-like wings. Then of another flying creature. He thought it was Viktor, but as the images in his mind clarified, he saw it looked like a bird. A bird person with white wings. Lia? Her undead projection? Perhaps before she destroyed herself, she wanted to battle Mikhail in her projection form.
Brandt smiled. He thought he understood. “You will keep him occupied while I will find his coffin?” He nodded. “I can do that.”
But first, he needed to clear this boat. Mikhail would be guarded, wherever he was, by men with elixir power. He looked back at the box of elixir. Oh, hell yeah.
He grabbed two injectors and loaded them with two vials, then he jammed them into himself, one in each arm. He felt a rush of sudden warmth, and then excruciating pain in his chest. “God!” he screeched. He clutched at his chest and went to his knees. It burned in him like he had just injected himself with Drano. His nails tried to claw through the solid floor.
It seemed like several minutes had passed before it finally calmed down.
Brandt stood up. He wasn’t sure if he’d feel different, but he definitely did. And he felt strong. Really strong. Freaking, incredibly strong. His arms were as light as feathers. He felt like he could jump through the ceiling, his legs felt so powerful. Mr. Hyde is now a juiced-up motherfucker.
“I’m going to rip off their goddamned heads,” he said aloud.
“You’ll need to get through me first,” said a gravelly voice. There was a dark-skinned man in a long coat, a black cloth wrapped around his neck, standing in the doorway to the other medical bay. It was the same man Brandt thought he had killed with a harpoon during the beach assault several days ago. That son of a bitch lived?
As soon as the man spoke, he swung one of the heavy IV stands at Brandt’s head. Brandt only had time to lift an arm to block the attack. The metal stand wrapped around Brandt’s wrist like it was a prop from a Looney Tunes cartoon. It barely even budged his arm.
Brandt shot his right fist forward and caught the man on the chin, sending the man slamming into the opposite wall. Normally, a punch like that would make someone take a step backward, not send him flying. The elixir was pulsing through him like a superpower. He followed his punch, catching the man with another punch before the guy could recover his balance. Then Brandt wrenched the man around and got him into a chokehold. The man fought hard, trying to pry Brandt's hands from him. Brandt remembered the speed and strength of this guy the previous time they fought, but the neck injury seemed to have considerably weakened him. On a crazy notion, Brandt switched his grip and bent the man's neck back, thinking maybe he could manipulate the injury further. The man bucked and clawed like a demon-possessed bear, but Brandt held on and put every ounce of strength he had into pulling the man's neck back. Brandt felt something pop in the man's neck like a joint had separated. The neck wound suddenly ripped open and the head bent back in an unnatural angle. The man's grip slackened. Then the man's head came off.
The entire head pulled free of the spine, tearing muscles and ligaments, and only the spinal cord, hanging on like a hinge, kept the skull from falling to the floor. Blood spurted upward momentarily, coating Brandt’s face, then flowed over the torn edges of the neck. Brandt let the dead man drop to the floor.
I’m not Mr. Hyde, I’m The Incredible Hulk.
He had no time to admire his newfound strength. There were other bad guys to kill.
He lingered on a kiss to Lia’s cold forehead. “For us,” he said, then went out the door.
Brandt was drenched in Tobias' blood and looking like a demon emerging from Hell’s red pool. He felt like a demon.
The bridge would probably have the highest concentration of bad guys, so Brandt charged up the stairway toward it. A peek through the portal showed him three men. One of them was Mikhail.
The time for subtlety was over. Brandt snapped a three-round burst into the door latch and the door swung open. The two henchmen turned in surprise, struggling to get the rifles off their backs. Brandt, the blood-soaked demon, came in firing, spraying the whole room with bullets just in case anyone else might be unseen or bent over tying their shoes. He emptied the magazine, lashing every inch of the bridge and the bodies of all three men. Glass shattered, electronics sparked and sizzled, the tang of hot brass and burnt gunpowder choked the air of the enclosed bridge space. He had hit something on the bridge that produced more smoke than he expected and he had to wait for it to clear enough to see. The front glass was broken and a brisk night breeze came through, brushing the smoke wisps around in a gentle swirl, gradually showing Brandt the results of his rampage. All three men were still alive. The two armed men groaned and were slowly getting up, but they were most definitely getting up. Mikhail had taken two steps back, but other than some torn fabric, he looked undamaged. Projection. Damn it! The chamber on Brandt’s rifle was open and there were no more rounds in it. The two bad guys had rifles and they would have plenty of rounds to fire at Brandt.
“Hulk smash” time. Brandt charged at the closest thug and got to him just as the guy pressed the trigger. The shot went wild and Brandt already had the guy’s arm in his grip. He throat punched the thug and wrenched the gun arm back trying to break it. The forearm snapped completely around like it was a twig. Holy shit! The point of a broken bone stuck out through a rip in the skin and Brandt let the arm flop limply to the guy's side. Blood poured from the injury and the man collapsed in a screaming fit. Brandt wanted to grab the guy's rifle but had no time as the other thug now had Brandt in his sights.
Brandt launched himself at the other man and heard two shots crack before he
impacted the guy. Brandt didn’t feel a hit, but he suspected he had been. His shoulder rammed the man in the chest and the two of them fell over each other on the floor. Mikhail still hadn’t entered the fray, strangely. Brandt buried an elbow into the thug’s nose, crushing it. The thug cursed and tried to claw at Brandt’s head, but the leverage was no good. Brandt jerked his body up and then slammed down to flatten the man’s chest, hoping to knock the air from him. It did. The man wheezed. Brandt rose up and pummeled the man’s face with his fist. He was in a white-hot rage comparable to the infamous Hulk and didn’t notice that he had caved the man’s skull in by the second punch. The injections had most definitely not worn off yet, his strength was simply unfathomable. He wondered how long it would last. Or if it would kill him on its own. Fine, kill me. Just let me kill them first.
He wasn’t going to second guess why Mikhail hadn’t attacked yet, but he sure as hell was going to take advantage of it. He recovered the dead henchmen’s rifle and stood up ready to empty it into Mikhail. Lia had actually been bloodied when she was a projection, so was it possible to do any damage to Mikhail’s projection with enough bullets?
Mikhail was gone. There was a larger hole in the front glass like a large mass had shot through it. Maybe Mikhail had transformed and flown away? All the better. Brandt could run downstairs and start looking for the coffin room. He turned and put the guy with the torn arm out of his misery with several bullets to his skull, then headed for the door.
Something rocketed through the front hole into the bridge, aiming at Brandt. He saw it too late, but not entirely too late. The thing hit Brandt just as he was leaping to the side. The impact sent him careening into a bridge console, not quite receiving the full force of the blow. The thing smashed into the rear wall of the bridge as Brandt scrambled to get back up.
The thing stood up. It was Mikhail, unfurling his giant Pterodactyl wings and splaying his claws wide.
“You have officially pissed me off, Mr. Dekker,” said Mikhail.
“Fuck you,” said Brandt.
Brandt once again emptied his rifle’s magazine, this time solely into Mikhail’s body and head. Holes opened in Mikhail’s body and dark wounds appeared on his face. Mikhail took one step back, seeming uncomfortable, but never fell. The gun clicked on a dead chamber and Mikhail’s newly scarred face grinned.
Brandt had no plan B for this, yet some little voice in his mind told him, stall. Brandt had always scoffed at movies where the combatants decided to have a verbal pissing contest the moment before they tear each other’s heads off, but right then he could use the distraction for time to think. Would Mikhail comply?
“You killed Lia. Now I’m going to kill you,” said Brandt, with his best epic posture.
“Your girlfriend is a vampyre, Mr. Dekker, and won’t be dead for long. And I am likewise dead, as you will be soon. But when you die, you will not come back.”
“I don’t give a fuck about dying. But before I do, I’m going to find your body and burn it. And then you won’t be coming back, either. How ya like them apples, dickhead?”
Brant didn’t think that Mikhail was intimidated, but there was a flicker of concern on the monster’s face. Yeah, that’s right. I know your weakness. There was just one problem: Brandt didn’t have a way to beat a projection without fire or radiation, and Mikhail could destroy him easily, right here. Now what, little voice?
Whatever voice told him to stall wasn’t saying anything else. His primary voice was telling him to run. He pelted for the exit. Mikhail reached out a clawed wing and hit Brandt like a baseball bat crushing a fastball. Brandt sailed into the door frame and ricocheted out onto the stairwell. That kind of force should’ve killed him, but he not only remained alive, he remained conscious and managed to hang on to the railing before falling overboard. Mikhail followed blazingly fast and cocked back a clawed hand, preparing to slice Brandt’s arms off when something hit Mikhail and sent him tumbling into the sea.
Brandt heaved himself up onto the stair landing and looked around for what the hell just happened. He looked in the night sky and saw the newcomer. It was a human-sized form with magnificent white feathered wings and claws in her free arms. Her beautiful face looked pink with power.
“Lia!”
She glanced at Brandt and nodded. No smile, nothing but a simple acknowledgment. She was in battle mode.
That’s my girl.
Tears came to his eyes, a combination of joy and sorrow. Joy that his love was still here in some form helping him fight this final battle, and sorrow because he knew what it meant: Lia was now undead and this was her last stand. They would bring this to a conclusion and then that was it. She would insist on being destroyed and would be gone forever. And he would follow her. He couldn’t think of a better way to spend the credit he had been given by God. He had been kept alive to do this, to help another soul who had also been lost and bring them both happiness for a short time before they both perished. Lia once told him she had lived a long time and she could accept death to keep her principles. I will accept that, too, Lia. Because he told her he wasn’t coming off that mountain without her being alive, and he still wasn’t. This boat was his mountain now.
Mikhail shot out of the sea like he was a ballistic missile from a submarine, trying to spear Lia, who dipped right and clawed at him as he passed. Mikhail recovered quickly and hit Lia flush, chest to chest. He grappled with her and then threw her a hundred feet. Mikhail turned his attention back to Brandt but had little time to act. Lia had already spun and sped back to intercept Mikhail again. She hit him hard and knocked him away from the yacht.
Mikhail was going to be distracted for a while.
“Go find his body,” Brandt heard a voice in his head.
It sounded like Lia’s voice. Brandt smiled and almost cried again. “Yes, dear.”
CHAPTER 34
He ran along the exterior, kicking in each door. Every chamber was devoid of occupants and he didn’t see anything like a coffin, or coffin-like container. There was a living room which he didn’t bother searching since he didn’t believe Mikhail would allow his vulnerable body to be in such an open place. He found a smaller corridor that crossed the middle of the ship, and dead center of the corridor was a heavy, marine-style portal. The door was locked, but Brandt ripped out the locked handle with his elixir-supplied strength.
In the corner of the cabin was a lidded steel box that was being hooked up to plastic tubing leading to a glass canister of something dark red. Surely, that was Lia’s blood, with Mikhail inside the box.
Both proving and complicating that fact was the broad-shouldered henchman unwinding the tubing. He turned to see the intruder. Brandt moved forward like a snake strike, but the broad-shouldered man was just as fast and was prepared. Brandt swung a roundhouse punch, which was parried by the man, and the man threw his own uppercut at Brandt. That connected and Brandt sailed backward. The man followed his attack with lightning speed and launched into the air, front knee extended, aiming to crush Brandt's chest, but Brandt was fast enough to roll aside, making the man land awkwardly. Brandt brought his knife up and plunged it toward the man's chest. The man reached up with both hands and halted the knife inches from penetration. He kicked at Brandt and rolled free. Both men got up and faced each other. This guy is more powerful than the last bunch.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Brandt.
The man nodded curtly. “Alex. Your executioner,” he said.
“Others tried and died,” said Brandt.
A pistol appeared in Alex’s hand like it was a magic trick. As Alex aimed it, Brandt surprised himself by how quickly he was able to slide sideways, then forward to grab Alex’s arm and send the man flying into a glass cabinet. Alex staggered after the impact as medical supplies tumbled out of the cabinet. Left on the shelf were several glass containers and a few Teflon coated canisters. The canisters’ labels sparked an old memory in Brandt’s busy brain, seeming significant, but Brandt di
dn’t have time to figure out why right then.
Alex spun and fired. Brandt dodged just as the trigger was pulled. The shot sliced through empty air, hitting the cabin wall. Brandt sprang forward like a panther, his knife in hand. Alex fired again twice, this time hitting Brandt somewhere. Brandt didn't know where, and didn't care. He slammed into Alex and drove him into the ground. They both rolled free and stood to face each other again.
Alex seemed alarmed that he was short of breath. “You took – elixir?” he wheezed.
Brandt held up two fingers.
“You are still not stronger than me,” said Alex, coughing.
“No, just sneakier.” Brandt gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. Alex was momentarily baffled, then it dawned on him. He quickly glanced over his shoulder, trying to see his back. It had a knife sticking out of it.
Alex reached around for the knife which was the opportunity Brandt needed. He charged at Alex again. Alex lifted the gun to fire and Brandt went low and slid underneath the aim, crashing into Alex’s legs. As Alex toppled downward, Brandt tucked his knees up and propelled Alex in the other direction. Brandt bounded up as Alex was still struggling to stand. The knife had twisted in Alex’s back. The cabinet that Brandt had noticed earlier was next to him, and a quick glance at it brought back the previous mystery into his preoccupied brain. The odd memory about the labels, that puzzled him earlier, was now suddenly clear. Brandt grinned and reached for the Teflon container with the curious label. A shot pelted the cabinet, the bullet having entered and exited through Brandt’s shoulder. His blood sprayed the cabinet door. He didn’t care. With the container in hand, he turned to face Alex.
Alex was unsteady, gun still in hand but wavering, unable to aim again. Brandt removed the top of the Teflon container and threw the whole thing at Alex. Alex blocked it easily. The container bounced off his arm and spun away, but splashed its contents on Alex's face. Alex raised his gun to fire at Brandt again and stopped. His face grew gaunt. His mouth fell open, his eyes bulged, and the gun dropped to the floor. He dug at his face with his nails and rubbed his face with the sleeves of his shirt, to no avail. It was on him.
