by P. T. Hylton
“We haven’t seen anything like that yet,” CB said. “We didn’t go in the main entrance, though, so maybe we’ll come across something similar. Thanks for the report. Stay in touch. Out.”
As they progressed, the placement of the bullet holes in the wall told the story of what had happened here. People had been inside, and the vampires had invaded. The humans had tried to fight them off.
“Can you imagine what it must have been like?” Alex asked. “Holed up in here, trying to fight off the vampires as they poured in?”
“Honestly?” Drew said. “I’d rather be trying to fight them off than to be in our shoes. At least they knew where the vamps were coming in. We’re headed into a dark facility, with no real clue where we’re going and no idea where the vampires might be hiding.”
“Way to bolster my confidence, buddy,” Alex said.
They reached the end of the lobby, turned on their headlamps, and headed west into the reactor.
CB and Firefly walked through a long hallway, pitch-black but for the pale beams of their headlamps. There were signs of battle everywhere. Massive holes ripped straight through the walls, destruction that must have come from high-caliber assault weapons.
Firefly hadn’t talked much since they entered the reactor. He was clearly disappointed that the exterior doors had already been removed and he hadn’t had the chance to blow them off the hinges himself. CB was grateful for the silence. He needed to remain completely aware, not only for his own sake, but he also had to keep his ears open for communications from his team.
Up ahead, something caught his eye, and he raised his head so that his lamp illuminated it. The light revealed three sets of elevators at the end of the hall. Without electricity, they wouldn’t be functional, but they were still worth checking out. He motioned Firefly forward.
Something was jammed between the twin doors of the elevator on the left, propping them open. CB crouched down and took a closer look at the object. It was a dark green, military-style helmet. That fit with the bullet holes. This place had been heavily defended. The bodies would have been devoured by the vampires long ago, but it was nice to see there was still some sign of the battle where so many men and women died.
The elevator car was on this floor. CB turned to Firefly. “Hang tight for a minute. I’m going to peek inside.”
He twisted his way through the door, carefully stepping over the helmet. He didn’t think the doors would slam shut and cut him in half if the helmet was moved, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Who knew, with this ancient technology?
The elevator was empty save for a smattering of bullet holes. He pointed his headlamp at the elevator control panel. The buttons showed three floors, but what was really interesting was that below that. The numbers continued below 1 in reverse order, each with a G in front of them. G1, G2, and so on. All the way to G10.
CB grabbed his radio and spoke into it. “Folks, we found an elevator. It seems the facility has ten underground levels. This place is much bigger than we thought.”
He heard both Alex and Simmons curse into their radios.
“It’s gonna be one hell of a task to get a control panel from ten stories underground, Captain,” Owl said.
“That’s why we brought the rover. Besides, we don’t know it’s that far down.” He thought for a moment. “Here’s what we’ll do. Firefly and I will start working our way down. Alex and Drew, you check out the upper levels, then report back.”
“Roger that, Captain,” Alex said.
CB wormed his way out of the elevator and found Firefly standing next to a red door. He gestured toward the sign next to it. “Check it out.”
The sign said, Stairs.
“Excellent. Let’s head down.”
Firefly turned the knob and pushed on the door, then frowned. It didn’t budge. He pushed again and got the same result.
“It’s not locked,” Firefly said, “but it’s not moving either.”
“Could be jammed. A lot of these doors warp over time. Might have to force it open.”
Firefly nodded. “That I can do.” He took a big step back and drew a deep breath, then kicked the door hard.
The door flew open and slammed against the wall. It sounded like a gunshot. The crash echoed down the stairway.
CB and Firefly froze, listening.
A hideous, unnatural roar came from somewhere far down the staircase.
“Shit,” Firefly said.
CB grabbed his radio. “Folks, change of plans. We have confirmation of an active vampire in Reactor 1.”
23
At CB’s command, Simmons and Owl joined him and Firefly in Reactor 1. He told Drew and Alex to continue their above-ground search in Reactor 2. After they’d checked to ensure the control panel wasn’t above ground, the team would reconvene. In the meantime, the crew in Reactor 1 would carefully begin working their way downward.
“Owl, my gut tells me we’re going to find the control panel underground,” CB said.
“Same,” Simmons echoed. “Why build ten stories underground if you’re not going to put the most vital equipment down there?”
“Lovely,” Owl said. “So, I’m gonna be driving the rover down this dark staircase where we know there are vampires awake? Sounds safe.”
“That’s why I called you in here,” CB said. “We’re going to do something about that. We’ve got six Daylights, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We need you to set up five of them, one on each landing down to the fifth floor. Cover as much of the darkness as you can. If we get down to five and still haven’t found the control panel, we’ll start spacing them out, one every other floor.”
“What about the sixth light?” Owl asked.
“That we’ll mount on the rover itself. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll give us some coverage. If shit goes south, we’ll have some light to cover us on our retreat.”
“I like that idea,” Owl said. “The rover will make it upstairs, but it ain’t exactly speedy.”
“Simmons, you stay with Owl. Cover her while she’s working, just in case something happens. I agree with your sentiment that it’s more likely on one of the lowest levels, but so was that vampire we heard. In the interest of safety, we’re going to start at G1 and work our way down rather than starting at the bottom. I’m not sending the team down to risk their lives on G10 only to find out the control panel was on G2. Firefly and I are going to search those floors as quickly and quietly as possible. Quiet is the operative word, hear me, Firefly?”
Firefly nodded.
“Good. Let’s make it happen.”
Owl got to work. No one mentioned that the Daylights hadn’t been field-tested. They were counting on the hypothesis that real living vampires reacted the same way to the lights as the samples had in Brian’s lab.
Once Owl had the Daylight set up on the first underground floor, CB decided it was time for him and Firefly to head into G1 and search for the control panel. They made their way past the Daylight Owl had set up. This door was jammed too, and since it swung inward, they didn’t have the luxury of kicking it in. After futilely tugging on it a few times, they took the door off its hinges.
As soon as they pulled down the door, the powerful odor of death and decay wafted out.
CB took one last breath of the relatively fresh air in the stairwell and stepped through the doorway.
Alex and Drew’s search of the first floor of Reactor 2 was uneventful, but more time-consuming than they would have liked. The place was a labyrinthine collection of corridors. Each was marked with a different color, apparently a system to make it easier to navigate the facility. But it wasn’t entirely helpful, since Alex and Drew had no idea what the colors meant, and they had to double back a few times to make sure they hadn’t missed any areas of the floor.
It took them nearly thirty minutes to check the first level. As they covered more and more ground without incident, they had to resist the natural inclination to relax, to drop their
guard. There could be a vampire around any corner, and it wouldn’t stop and give Alex and Drew time to collect themselves before attacking.
If Alex were being honest, she’d have to admit that she was a little jealous of the crew in the other reactor. While Alex and Drew searched empty offices, they were plunging down into the unknown depths of the facility. They would likely find both vampires and the control panel, while she and Drew would find nothing at all.
Still, she fought the urge to rush through these floors. Not only would that open up the possibility of being attacked, but it would also increase the chances of their missing the very piece of equipment they were here to find.
Alex finally figured out the color-coding system just as they finished their search of the first level. There was a central hub in the middle of the building that contained what seemed to be the most important offices, and each wing off the hub was marked with a different color.
As they made their way back to the staircase, Alex spoke into her microphone. “First floor’s clear, Captain. Moving on to the second floor.”
“Roger that.” The response was given in a whisper. He and Firefly must have begun their search of G1.
Alex deactivated her microphone and said, “Oh, sure, we have to tell him when we’re progressing to a new area, but he doesn’t tell us?”
Drew sighed. “Don’t start. The last thing we need today is you going off on one of your—”
“Relax, big guy. I’m kidding.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. I get it. Things have been a little weird lately. But I just want to put it behind me and get back to good old-fashioned ass kicking. Cool with you?”
He chuckled. “Very.”
They went up the stairs to level two, moving carefully, sweeping the light from their headlamps across each area and making sure it was clear before progressing.
The second floor was laid out exactly like the first. Since they now had a grasp on the color-coding system and the layout, they were able to move much more quickly. After ten minutes, they’d covered nearly half the floor.
They were sweeping through a cluster of offices in the blue section when Drew suddenly froze. “Alex, check this out.”
He was looking through an open door into an interior office that seemed indistinguishable from any of the others. She leaned in for a closer look and quickly saw what he’d been referring to.
A body was slumped in the corner of the room. For a moment, Alex considered that it might be a human, one of the people who’d worked and died here. Maybe his body hadn’t been found, or he’d been one of the last to die. But she quickly realized that didn’t make any sense. If it were human, the vampires would have devoured it years ago along with all the other casualties here.
“You think it’s sleeping?” Drew whispered.
She considered that. It wasn’t attacking them, so that was a mark in the sleeping column. On the other hand, who ever heard of a vampire sleeping exposed like this? They were supposed to sleep covered in dirt, like the vamps they’d found in Buenos Aires.
“Not sleeping,” Alex said.
Drew gripped his shotgun tightly. “Maybe we should—”
The vampire sprang up and lunged at them, letting out an ear-splitting hiss as it came.
This time, Drew was ready. He brought up his shotgun and fired. The vampire fell backward as if hit by a truck. It landed on its back and didn’t get up again. The gaping hole in its chest told the tale; Drew had hit it in the heart with one of his silver slugs.
Alex blinked hard, momentarily stunned by the shotgun firing in such close quarters. She drew her sword and pressed her back to Drew’s. He was probably as stunned as she was, and she wanted to make sure they could at least see, in case something came at them from either direction.
After a moment, the roar in her ears turned into an annoying ringing.
She stood perfectly still, listening. Then she drew a sharp breath at what she heard.
There was movement in the halls. In both directions. She also heard a distant, angry grunt. Apparently, they weren’t the only ones who’d been affected by the sound of the shotgun blast. Something else—multiple something elses—had been made aware of their presence.
Just then, CB’s voice came through her earpiece. “Team, I’ve found something. Let’s reconvene at the ship.”
“Thank God,” Drew whispered.
They made their way quickly to the nearest staircase and headed down.
24
Fifteen minutes later, the team gathered outside the ship. Alex and Drew told the others about their vampire encounter.
“Maybe that’ll be our excitement for the day,” Drew said.
CB frowned. “Somehow, I doubt it.”
“How’d it go for you?” Alex asked.
“We made it all the way down to the fifth underground level. We didn’t encounter any vampires, other than the one we heard when we banged the door open. They’d definitely been there recently, though. We could smell them.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Alex said. “They gotta be sleeping.”
“Perhaps,” CB said. “But we didn’t find any sleeping, either.”
Alex had to admit that this was a bit troubling.
“These are dumb animals we’re dealing with,” Firefly said. “They operate on instinct. Maybe they burrow as far below the Earth as they can. Maybe they’re all sleeping on G10.”
“Could be,” CB allowed. “If so, we’re going to be bumping right up against them.”
He then showed the team what he and Firefly had found. It was a blueprint of the facility that showed the layout of each floor, as well as what was on each of them. It showed the reactor control room was in the center of G9.
“Guess we’re going almost all the way down,” Alex said.
“Yes,” CB said. “I’d like us to concentrate our efforts. Everyone together in Reactor 1, now. Once we get the control panel out, we’ll head back to Reactor 2, if there’s time.” He glanced at his watch. “We have five and a half hours before sunset. Should be plenty of time to get them out, but if worse comes to worst, we can always make a return trip for the second control panel, if Director Bowen thinks she needs it.”
The team studied the blueprint in silence for a moment. Then Owl said, “The doors are gonna be a problem. The rover is six feet wide. It’ll fit through the double doors on the ground floor, but the doors to each underground level are much smaller. No way it’s squeezing through those.”
“I can widen those doors for you,” Firefly said.
“Those walls are solid concrete,” Simmons said, “and the frames are steel.”
Firefly grinned. “Not a problem. I can blow a hole in the wall wide enough for two rovers to pass side by side.”
“Maybe so, but it would make one hell of a racket,” CB said. “Besides, an explosion that big could compromise the stairs. We can’t risk it. We’ll have to dismantle the control panel and bring it out to the rover piece by piece.”
Firefly didn’t look happy, but he didn’t voice a complaint, either.
“We’re going to do this safely,” CB said. “Firefly and I have already swept floors G1 through G5. We’re going to sweep G6, 7, and 8 before we get to work on 9.”
“You sure we have time for that, Captain?” Drew asked.
“We’re making time for it. The last thing we want is to find out we have vampires between us and our exit.”
“We’ve got the Daylights covering our escape path, too,” Alex said.
“Yes,” CB said. “But, remember, they only have a twenty-minute battery life. We have to leave them turned off until we need them. That’s Owl’s job.”
Owl nodded. “I’ve got them all rigged up on a remote. I can click them all on at once from the rover if shit goes sideways.”
CB folded up the blueprint and stuck it in his vest. “Drew, Firefly, Alex, and I will go on ahead to sweep floors G6 through G8. Simmons, you stay with Owl
and watch her back. The two of you work on getting the rover down the stairs. You got any questions, now’s the time, because once we’re in there, we’ll need to be as quiet as possible.”
He waited a moment and heard no questions.
“Good. Let’s move out.”
Before heading back down, the team checked the three above-ground levels. Unlike in Reactor 2, no vampires were lurking up there. They did, however, find a massive hole in the ceiling of level 3. It looked like a cannon had shot through the domed roof. The gap had to be fifteen feet wide.
“Okay,” CB said. “Looks like we’re clear up here. Let’s head down where the darkness lives.”
Levels G6, G7, and G8 were much like the other levels CB and Firefly had described: empty and smelling of death. Since there were four of them working together now, they were able to search all three floors thoroughly in less than an hour. Owl drove the eight-wheeled rover down the stairs, waiting one landing behind the team until CB had declared the next level safe and given her the all-clear to proceed. Simmons waited with her, his rifle at the ready in case trouble came from below.
They reached level G9 and headed in. With the blueprint, they knew the exact location of the control room, but once again, CB wanted to err on the side of caution and swept the rest of the floor before proceeding to their destination. Alex kept her sword in hand; if they did encounter a stray vampire, as they had in Reactor 2, she’d try to take it out quietly.
Alex was starting to think perhaps they were being overly cautious. Maybe there weren’t that many vampires in this facility to begin with, and any that were here were sleeping. But she forced herself to be like CB, to put caution ahead of all else. Besides, CB and Firefly had heard a vampire roar, so there was at least one awake and unaccounted for in this reactor.
After clearing the rest of the level, CB, Alex, Drew, and Firefly prepared to enter the control room. Alex stood in front of the double doors, sword in hand. CB hunched next to her, pistols at the ready. He counted them down with his fingers, and on three Firefly and Drew threw the doors wide.
