by P. T. Hylton
“I understand,” Brian said. “I’m just as angry as you are.”
CB laughed. “Kid, you got a funny way of showing it.”
Brian looked up sharply, and his eyes were filled with tears. “I’d bash my body against that door until I was bloody if I thought it would make any difference. If I thought it could save them, I’d kill Fleming and every one of his followers.”
CB was surprised to find he believed him.
“But the truth is, I’m locked in a cell,” Brian continued. “I can either wear myself out pointlessly raging, or I can use this time to think. To plan.”
CB hated to admit it, but the kid was right. He sat down on the empty bench on his side of the room with a sigh. “All right, so what have you been thinking?”
Brian leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Fleming’s smart. And he’s patient. Whatever he wants from us, he’ll reveal it in his own time. We have to come to grips with the fact that it might be a day or two before he’s ready to have that conversation.”
CB grimaced. “And what happens to the team while we’re rotting in this cell?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any control over that. But you trained them better than anyone else could. You gave them a chance.”
“Against vampires after dark? All the training in the world won’t matter.”
“Maybe they won’t have to face the vampires. They’re at NORAD, right? If they can get inside, secure a few rooms, they might just have a chance.”
It was possible. For all CB knew, NORAD could be crawling with vampires just like the NSA. And yet, there was a chance it wasn’t. Thank God Alex hadn’t listened to him. If they’d stayed on the ship, they would have been easy targets after sundown.
He didn’t know if they could survive the night, but they had a chance. And if anyone could do it, it was Alex.
42
They made their way toward the north entrance of the NORAD facility. Jessica had shown them pictures during their briefing, but seeing it in person was different. Alex could see it in the distance, marked by a fence stretching in either direction. In the center there was a tunnel that stuck out of the mountainside, blocked by a massive concrete door.
The snowfall stopped over the next ten minutes, and the sun beat down on them, making the snow sparkle. In other circumstances, it would have been beautiful. Alex briefly considered how she was one of the few humans alive who’d seen snow on the surface of Earth, but she bitterly pushed the thought away. She’d gladly trade the sight of snow for not having to see two friends slaughtered by vampires. The evil she’d seen greatly outweighed the good.
The sun was dropping quickly now, but they were going to make it. The landscape ahead rose in a thirty-foot ridge, but once they got over that, it was a straight shot down to the entrance.
Alex glanced over at Jessica. Her jaw was set and her eyes were locked on the entrance ahead. Alex realized the woman was trying very hard not to cry.
“Hey,” Alex said. “It’s okay to be upset.”
Jessica didn’t take her eyes off the concrete door. “Not right now, it isn’t. There’s too much riding on us.”
Alex thought about arguing, but she couldn’t think of how to combat that logic. She walked to the rover instead.
Wesley was staring up at the sky, but his eyes looked clearer now. His bandage was still seeping blood, but he was alive, which meant the flow had to have subsided somewhat.
“We’re going to get you inside soon,” Alex said. “Then we’ll let you stay still for a while.”
“That would be great,” Wesley said in a strained voice. “I’m pretty sure Owl is purposely driving over as many bumps as possible.”
“Ha!” Owl said. “I’d like to see anyone else give this smooth of a ride through two feet of snow.” She nodded toward the door. “We have a clear shot from here. No bad guys. Mind if we speed ahead and wait for you at the door?”
“Fine with me,” Alex said.
The rover whined as it sped up, plowing through the snow a bit faster, and it started up the ridge. Alex and the team walked in the trail of displaced snow it left in its wake.
As the rover crested the ridge, Alex saw something sticking out of the snow at the top of the hill. She squinted toward it. Was that…an arm?
But that was impossible. The sun was still shining on them. A vampire wouldn’t risk an attack now with the sun shining, blood or no. Unless it wasn’t waiting to attack. Maybe it was already dead.
“Owl, wait!” Alex called.
But it was too late.
The rover went over the top, and the thunderous sound of fifty-caliber guns roared through the air.
Owl dove from the rover as bullets tore through the vehicle. She rolled toward the back.
Alex and the rest of the team sprinted for the rover. They were still blocked from the guns by the ridge.
Owl crouched behind the rover and reached up, grabbing Wesley and pulling him backward off the vehicle. He cried out in pain as he hit the ground. Owl dragged him back over the crest of the hill, out of the line of fire.
The rover tumbled down the other side of the hill, and the gunfire stopped.
Alex reached Owl and Wesley and dropped to the ground alongside them. “You okay?”
Wesley groaned. “Not really. But not worse than before.”
“I’m fine,” Owl said. “We got lucky.”
Alex silently cursed herself. Why’d she let them go on ahead? It was only dumb luck that they weren’t both dead.
“Stay here.” She rose up into a crouch and carefully made her way up the top of the hill. Peering over, she saw a line of fifty-caliber guns along the fence. They’d been blocked by the ridge before, so she hadn’t been able to see them.
These must have been the same guns that shot down the away ship.
How were they going to get past those guns? And who was firing them?
She let her eyes wander, taking in the scene, hoping some advantage would reveal itself.
The other side of the hill was blocked from the wind at Alex’s back, and the snow was much more shallow. She could even see the shape of the ground beneath. It was oddly formed. Strangely lumpy.
Something about that ground wasn’t right.
She spotted another arm protruding from the snow. And, ten feet away, a leg. And another, fifteen feet beyond that.
With horror, Alex realized what she was standing on. This wasn’t a hill. It was a pile of bodies.
“I think the guns are on auto sensors,” Alex told the team.
The team was still coping with the news that they were standing on a pile of bodies. Firefly, in particular, seemed uncomfortable. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, his eyes on the ground beneath his feet.
“The way I figure it,” she continued, “vampires wander up toward the fence from time to time. The guns take them out. Over time, the bodies have piled up.”
“Damn,” Owl said. “So, no one was shooting at the ship?”
“Not purposely.”
Alex glanced at the horizon. The door that had seemed so close only ten minutes before seemed further now that they knew there were fifty-caliber guns set to destroy anything that moved between them and it.
“We’ve gotta find a way past the guns,” Alex said.
“Firefly,” Wesley said, his voice a weak groan.
Firefly leaned down toward him. “What is it, bud? You need something?”
“Yeah, I need you to take out those guns. You’ve got those exploding rounds, right, moron?”
Firefly’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. I do!” He looked at Alex questioningly.
“Do it,” she said.
Firefly and Alex crept to the crest of the ridge while Jessica and Owl stayed down with Wesley.
Firefly loaded the exploding rounds into his rifle. They laid on their stomachs and peered down at the guns.
“You think this will work?” Alex asked.
“One way to find out.” He took aim and fired. T
he base of the turret exploded, and the gun leaned sickly to the right.
“That one’s out of commission,” Alex said.
Firefly took out the other four weapons in five shots. The one he missed hit the fence and blasted a massive hole in it. “Whoops,” he said.
Alex gazed down at the guns. They certainly looked like they wouldn’t function, but there was only one way to know for sure. She started to stand, but Firefly put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me go.” He nodded back at the rover. “They need you a hell of a lot more than they need me.”
She started to object, but she knew he was right. They needed a leader. “Okay.”
Firefly stood tall and walked down the hill, striding over the mountain of bodies like he was on a Sunday-afternoon stroll through the Hub. He reached the bottom of the hill without a gun so much as twitching. Grinning up at Alex, he said, “I guess it worked.”
Alex headed back down to Owl, Wesley, and Jessica.
“How we gonna get him there?” Owl asked, nodding at Wesley.
Alex stripped off her jacket and set it on the ground. Then she grabbed Wesley under the arms and put him on top of it. Wrapping the jacket sleeves under his arms, she took one and handed the other to Owl.
Jessica glanced at the horizon where the sun was now touching the land. “It’s gonna be close.”
“Then we’d better get started.”
They dragged Wesley up the hill, Alex pulling one jacket arm and Owl pulling the other. By the time they crested the ridge and started down the other side, the sun was half sunk beyond the horizon.
“Jessica, run ahead,” Alex said. “See about getting that door open.”
Jessica nodded, then dashed through the shallower snow on the other side of the hill.
Alex, Owl, and Wesley quickly followed. Going downhill was much faster than going up, and they were soon at the bottom.
Hope sprang in Alex’s chest as they crossed the last twenty yards to the concrete door. It was close, but they were going to make it.
“Alex,” Jessica said. “Something’s wrong.”
The Director of Engineering was crouched in front of the door. She had her tablet out and was looking at it.
Alex noticed something else odd. The key pad on the concrete door was lit up. “It still has power?”
“Not just that,” Jessica said. “The records we have from the NSA have codes for this entrance. None of them are working.”
Alex went cold, and it wasn’t just from the chill of the wind. “What does that mean?”
“Means someone changed them at some point. Could have been years ago. Maybe during the infection, when the NSA stopped updating their—”
“Does it mean we can’t open the door?” Alex said.
“Yes,” Jessica said. “I can’t open it.”
Alex’s knees suddenly went weak. They’d been so close. The parts they needed were right on the other side of that door. It seemed cruel, after everything they’d been through, to be stopped now, when they were so close.
The sun dipped below the horizon. Night had fallen.
Almost immediately, the howling began.
“Why?” Firefly asked in a husky voice. “Why did this happen when we were almost there?”
“Ours is not to question why,” Alex muttered.
“Just to be prepared to die,” Owl and Firefly finished, their voices hollow.
Alex drew her sword. “Weapons at the ready. Backs to the wall. They’ll be able to smell us. It won’t be long until they arrive.”
Owl and Firefly wordlessly drew their weapons. Jessica stayed where she was, frantically punching numbers into the key pad.
The howls were louder now, coming from every direction.
Alex squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath through her nose to steady herself. If she had to die, this was the way she wanted to do it. She wanted to go out like her heroes. Like Drew. Like Simmons.
And she wasn’t going out alone. Maybe night vampires were impossibly strong and impossibly fast, but she was taking at least one of those bastards with her.
The howls were so loud they made the ground shake. Any moment now, the vampires would crest that ridge and fall on them like rain.
She turned and looked her comrades in the eyes one at a time. Owl. Firefly. Wesley. Jessica.
“It was an honor to have served with you,” she said.
She gripped her sword with both hands and waited, eyes on the ridge top. This was how it should end. It was how she was always meant to end.
A loud grating sound came from behind her. She spun and then gasped at what she saw.
The concrete door was opening.
“My God, Jessica,” Alex whispered. “You did it.”
Jessica looked up at her, eyes wide. “That wasn’t me.”
The door swung open three feet. A man’s face appeared in the gap. He was quickly joined by two others.
“Get in here,” the man said. “Now!”
43
“Get inside,” Alex said to her team, echoing the tall man in the doorway.
The nearby howling shook the ground as Alex and Owl dragged Wesley through the open door. Firefly and Jessica quickly followed.
As soon as they were past the threshold, the tall man in the center said, “Shut the door.”
The other two men did as he said. As the door swung closed, Alex saw it had a one-foot steel core inside the concrete on either side of it.
The door shut with a boom. They were safely inside.
For a few long moments, no one spoke. The two groups regarded each other in stunned silence. Alex wasn’t sure who was more shocked, her and her team, or these soldiers. A rapid-fire pounding on the door woke them from their introspection. It sounded like a succession of cannonballs was hitting it.
“I can’t believe you took out our artillery,” the man on the left said. He was the shortest of the three, with close-cropped black hair and glasses. “You led them right to us.”
“That’s enough, Griffin,” the tall one said. He had black hair, too, but his was longer, falling nearly to his shoulders. Not only was he the tallest person in the room, but he was also the broadest. His muscular frame stretched his army-green tee shirt. He pointed to Wesley. “Help me. Let’s get them inside.”
Alex had thought they were inside, but looking down the tunnel, she saw another massive door, this one made completely of steel.
Two of the men, Griffin and the one with the beard, picked up Wesley in a fireman’s carry and carefully walked him down the hall. Wesley looked at Alex, wide-eyed. Clearly, he didn’t like being carried by these strangers. Alex didn’t blame him.
The tall man beckoned them onward. As they walked, he said, “I’m sorry for our confusion. We didn’t think there was anybody left out there. Where on Earth did you come from?”
Alex considered how to answer the question. They didn’t know anything about these people other than they were heavily armed. If they learned about New Haven, they might decide living in the clouds was preferable to living under a mountain and try to take it for their own. She decided to deflect. “We didn’t know anyone else was here, either. How many of you are there?”
“Quite a good many,” the man said. He stopped and held out his hand. “I’m Jaden.”
She shook it. “Alex.” She introduced the rest of her team, and Jaden introduced Griffin and Daniel, the bearded man.
They reached the door at the end of the hallway, and Jaden pulled it open. It swung so easily that Alex was surprised to see it was four feet thick and solid steel, perfectly balanced on its hinges.
Jaden paused at the open entrance. “Sorry, but we need to know a little more about you, before we go inside. We’re in charge of defending the city, and it would be irresponsible to take you in there without a little more information.”
The city? How many people lived under this mountain?
“I understand,” Alex said. “We’d do the same.”
“You didn’t answer my question before. Where’d you come from?”
Alex’s mind raced, trying to compose a hybrid of truth and lies that would be enough to get them through that door.
But Jessica spoke before Alex could. “We’re from another city. The last city, we thought.”
Jaden chuckled. “Same here.”
“We don’t know anything about you,” she continued, “so you’ll have to forgive our reluctance to reveal too much about our location until we get to know you better.”
Jaden nodded thoughtfully. “I can understand that. I hope we can earn your trust at the same time you’re earning ours.”
Alex was impressed. Apparently, Jessica had recovered from what she’d seen outside and was back to being the no-nonsense director from New Haven. The more Alex got to know the woman, the more she respected her.
“Perhaps you can,” Jessica said. “We need your help.”
Daniel scoffed. “You don’t want to tell us where you’re from, but you want our help?”
Jaden held up a hand. “Let’s hear them out.”
This time Alex spoke. “We came here because our nuclear reactor is damaged. We figured this place would be abandoned and we could get the parts we need from the reactor’s control panel here.”
Jaden stroked his stubbly chin. “Hmm. We may be able to help you there.”
“Jaden, we don’t know anything about them,” Daniel said in a gruff whisper.
“We know they’re human. And they’re in trouble. A city without power won’t last long. If there’s something we can do to help, we’re going to do it. Let’s go inside.”
Alex had the sudden urge to throw her arms around the man’s neck and hug him, but she didn’t think that would be very professional.
They stepped through the door and entered the city.
It was a wide, brightly lit hallway, not all that different from something they might find in the interior of New Haven. A woman walked by and waved at Jaden as she passed. She looked oddly at Alex and the team, but she didn’t stop to ask any questions.
