by P. T. Hylton
He broke eye contact, looking down at the table. “Of course, I remember.”
“Now, imagine that happening to every man and woman who settles in that damn prison. How many people is it going to be? Two hundred?”
“Try three.”
Alex cursed under her breath. “Fleming trusts you. He respects you. You have to convince him to put this thing on pause. He’s so blinded by his confidence that he isn’t seeing the obvious. The people he sends down there? They won’t last a week in that prison.”
“Fort Stearns,” Firefly said softly.
“Excuse me?”
“He wants to name it Fort Stearns. In honor of the former head of the Council. He says it’ll be a nice gesture. After the accident and all.”
“The accident?” Alex said. Her voice sounded distant in her own ears as the anger boiled up in her. Firefly suddenly couldn’t meet her gaze.
He raised his glass with a shaky hand and took a big swallow of red wine. When he set it down, he looked her in the eye. “The accident, whatever it was, I’m sure every person involved wishes it hadn’t happened. But it did. We gotta find a way to move on from it.”
“What about justice?” Her voice was cold, her initial plan to remain friendly forgotten.
“It’s time to grow up, Alex. If Fleming knows about what Jaden told you, we have our answer. Resettlement is moving forward. Get onboard. I’m telling you this as a friend. You have a good position here, but Fleming has powerful supporters. People who go up against Fleming don’t keep their jobs too long. Ask General Craig.”
Alex took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but her very surroundings made her even more angry. “The people in this restaurant, the ones you’re enjoying the good life with, they won’t be the people he sends to ‘Fort Stearns.’ It’ll be the badges. The worker bees. The people from the Ridge. The ones Fleming claimed to be fighting for when he rose to power. These people here in the Hub will be the last ones to soil their fancy shoes with the dust of the Earth.”
“Alex, please.”
The panic in his eyes made Alex realize how loudly she’d been speaking. She looked around and saw that the people at the surrounding tables were staring at her. Some were even whispering. All of which served to make her even angrier.
Firefly leaned close and spoke softly. “Listen, I understand your concerns. I swear to God, I do. You think I haven’t considered this stuff? There are huge risks to Resettlement. But staying up here isn’t any better. We’re one major system failure away from this ship crashing and every person aboard dying. There is no safe option. But in Fort Stearns we’ll have the walls.”
“You know as well as I do that a vampire at night could hop that wall.”
“And it’ll get burned by the daylights if it tries. Or lit up by our armed guards.”
“What about silver mail? How are they going to make enough for three hundred people in less than a month?”
“We won’t need it. Not with our other defenses.”
“You’re delusional.” She pushed back her chair and stood up.
“We haven’t even ordered yet,” he said, the shock clear on his face. “You’re not going to eat?”
“No. I’m not hungry. I’m going to grab a beer in the Ridge. Enjoy your wine, Firefly.”
Aaron vividly remembered his first thought after he’d become a vampire, during the third wave of the great infestation.
He remembered the feelings, too: the hunger, the irresistible compulsion to follow his master’s commands, the electric feeling of power racing through his veins where blood had once flowed.
But mostly he remembered the thought: now anything is possible.
In that imagined glimpse of his limitless future, he’d never imagined that he’d spend every night in a musky storeroom, moving boxes and filling out spreadsheets. And yet, here he was, hunched over a computer at a little after two in the morning, entering the updated grain inventory into a color-coded cell on a spreadsheet. The color was Orange, Accent 2. He knew because he’d used it approximately eighteen hundred times over the past four nights.
To make matters worse, not only was he forced to do mindless labor, but they didn’t even trust him to do it correctly. Toby, their trainer/chaperone, watched over his shoulder as Aaron keyed in the information. Aaron idly wondered how long it would take him to rip out Toby’s throat. Would Toby even have a chance to put up a fight? Aaron guessed he wouldn’t. He speculated that he could kill Toby before the other vampire even knew what was happening.
Of course, Aaron’s own throat would probably be ripped out by Jaden and his vampire disciples, shortly thereafter. If they were feeling generous. If not, they’d throw him back out in the snow to starve.
So, Aaron kept a forced smile on his face even while working on his meaningless tasks.
He saved his spreadsheet and yelled, “Yo, Mark! You got those gears stocked?”
Mark raced up a ladder, a box under one arm. He moved at a pace that would have been shocking if he’d been a human. He quickly reached the top and placed the box on a shelf.
“Done,” he said.
“Excellent.” Aaron turned in his chair to look at their chaperone. “What else you got for us, Toby?”
Toby laughed and shook his head. “You guys are like kids running around, always in a hurry. In time you’ll learn to pace yourselves.”
“Kids?” Mark asked, climbing down the ladder. “We’re nearly two hundred years old. How old are you?”
“Four hundred thirteen.”
Aaron didn’t know how to respond to that. Toby looked to be in his forties. Did age mean anything in a world where your looks never changed? “There’s got to be some more work we can do. We’ve got four hours until dawn.”
Toby shook his head again, then pulled the radio off his belt. “Griffin, you there?”
“Yeah, buddy,” the reply came. “What do you got for me?”
Toby glanced at Aaron. “Two eager vampire cubs looking for work. You need a couple pairs of hands?”
Aaron and Mark spent the rest of the night helping five other vampires install new piping for the water system. They were still away from the humans, and the crew boss, Griffin, kept a wary eye on them throughout the night, but it was nice to get a change of scenery.
They learned quite a bit by simply keeping their mouths shut and listening. They learned about how Jaden often left with a team to get supplies for Agartha. Maybe just as importantly, they learned there was another human city, one that was built on an airship. Apparently, the people on the airship were trying to resettle onto the surface.
A half hour before sunrise, Toby showed up to take them back to their quarters. He had a surprise for them: two blood packs.
“Reward for a hard night’s work,” he told them.
Back in their quarters, Aaron and Mark drank from the packs as they lounged on their beds. Normally, they each got one packet a day, delivered just after they woke, so this was a rare treat.
Aaron set down the empty packet and lay his head on his pillow. The combination of a full belly and the approaching dawn had left him tired and happy. “We did well tonight, Mark. Toby is starting to like us. I’ll bet they give us access to more sections of the city soon.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing I had this blood to wash the taste out of my mouth after kissing ass all night.”
Aaron chuckled. “Stay strong, buddy. It won’t be forever. Once we’re free of Toby shadowing us everywhere, all we need is access to the security control room. If we turn the humans who work in there, we’re golden. We’d control the blast doors, the gun turrets, the alarm systems, you name it.”
“What do we do, then?”
“We force them to send out an emergency signal and get the vampires running for the blast doors. I figure if we trap Jaden’s disciples between the blast doors, we’ll have time to turn a bunch of the humans into disciples of our own.”
“Huh.” Mark was silent so long, Aaron thought
he might have fallen asleep, but then he spoke again. “I don’t know, man. That all seems pretty complicated. Who knows when they’ll even let us out without Toby watching us? Things seem to move damn slow around here.”
“Relax. It’s good that things are moving slowly. Means we have time to plan. For now, we just have to concentrate on getting Jaden’s trust. Once we have that, everything will fall into place.”
“And what do we do once we take over?”
“We do what Jaden won’t,” Aaron answered. “We help the Ferals. With ten thousand humans in this place, I’ll bet we could feed four thousand vampires. And that’s just the start. Once we get the humans breeding, every female pumping out a kid a year, that number will jump up fast in just a few generations. Vampires could have a world worth living in again. All vampires, not just one hundred assholes who think they’re better than the rest of us.”
“Heh. I’d like to see that.”
“You will see it. And the best part? We’re going to rule it.”
16
The next two weeks were a whirlwind. Fleming sent the GMT on fourteen missions in as many days.
Today was their fifteenth. Alex had promised her team they’d get a much-needed break after this one, and it was a promise she intended to keep, no matter what Fleming had to say about it.
The two previous weeks had been an assortment of failures and successes. They’d managed to bring back all the weapons from the Colombian rainforest. It had taken five trips, and they’d encountered a few vampires waiting in the vault on their fifth trip, but they’d managed to recover every damn crate.
Alex had hoped that this would earn them a short reprieve, but she’d been incorrect. First, the team had been sent to salvage as much as they could from the away ship that had crashed near Agartha. The backup ship was serving the team well enough, but Fleming had a team working on building a larger transport that could get big groups to and from Fort Stearns.
Then, there had been the daylights. Brian needed more supplies to continue making them in the numbers and sizes Fleming demanded. The parts he needed would have been used in large lighting systems in the pre-infestation days, so the GMT had gone to retrieve them. Though they’d visited various sports stadiums around the world, they’d so far come back empty-handed. It turned out that the stadiums hadn’t held up well without anyone to maintain them. The rusted-out and deteriorated lighting systems had been useless.
And then, there was Firefly. Things had been contentious between Alex and Firefly since their ill-fated dinner. He and a few of his best recruits had accompanied them on about half the missions, and Firefly seemed to flex his leadership muscles a little more on each trip. The last time, he’d actually tried to override one of Alex’s commands, a move that had almost earned him a punch in the face. He’d apologized after the mission and had promised to let her take the lead on this next mission, but she’d believe it when she’d seen it.
It hadn’t been all bad, though. As hard as the nonstop schedule had been on her team, it had hardened them like a refining fire. She almost couldn’t believe how far they’d come in such a short time. They operated with poise and instinctive teamwork that most units took years to develop. The Barton brothers were absolute monsters in the field, eradicating hostiles with a ruthless efficiency. Chuck had come into his own, too, now that he’d been moved back to reconnaissance.
The other bright spot was their newly returned team member, the one who’d taken over the explosives specialist job from Chuck. He still had a slight limp and probably always would, but it didn’t restrict his movement. It was damn good to have Wesley back on the team.
Though there were no backup GMT recruits at the moment―Fleming was supposedly working on that―they had a full team again for the first time since Hope’s death.
Now they were back on the away ship, heading toward yet another mission. They were going after another lighting system and the stakes were high; Brian was out of components, and he wouldn’t be making any more daylights for Fort Stearns until the team brought him some.
Alex looked out the window and tried not to let her confidence falter at the sight of the landscape stretched below her. Nothing but sand and mountains as far as she could see. She couldn’t imagine a large lighting system down there.
Owl came over the speaker when they were five minutes out from their destination. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re ready for some fun in the sun, because we will soon be arriving at the location formerly called Las Vegas. Also known as Sin City.”
Patrick sat up a bit straighter at that. “Sin City, huh? That doesn’t sound half bad.”
The ship banked left, and Alex noticed some columns protruding from the sand; it took her a moment to identify them as the tops of buildings. There were no other signs that a city had ever been there. If there were roads and houses down there, they were buried beneath the sand.
“Las Vegas means ‘the meadow’ in Spanish,” Owl continued. “In actuality, the city is situated in a basin in the Mojave Desert. It’s surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides. This area also had the third greatest seismic activity of anywhere in the United States. Whether it was an earthquake, or simply the passage of time that led the city to being covered in sand, I do not know.”
Chuck let out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Ed asked.
Chuck nodded out the window. “We’re going into a desert, one of the sunniest places on Earth. And yet, we’re going to be digging down into the darkness under the sand.”
Ed chuckled. “Let it never be said the GMT doesn’t go to great lengths to find and exterminate the enemy.”
Firefly touched his radio. “Hey, Owl, how many people lived here, prior to the infestation?”
“Patience, Captain,” she said. “Las Vegas was known for its casinos, which were gambling establishments, where visitors could wager their money against long odds in the hopes of winning even more.”
“Long odds, huh?” Patrick interjected. “This is my kind of town.”
“And to answer Captain Eldred’s question, the population of the city was eight hundred thousand people, prior to infestation.”
“Great,” Firefly muttered. “So, we’re looking at over three quarters of a million vampires under that sand.”
“That is all the information I have for you today,” Owl said. “My apologies. With our frantic schedule, I haven’t had much time to spend in the library.”
The ship touched down next to three towers that stuck out several stories from the sand.
Alex led the team off the ship and out onto the sea of sand.
Firefly put his hand in his hips and grunted. “I thought Brian said the lights we’re looking for are in a stadium.”
“They are,” Alex answered. Then she pointed downward.
“Great,” he said. “So, we take the tower down?”
“Yep,” Owl said, stepping out of the ship. “There should be a system of tunnels that connect this tower to the stadium. Assuming it hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the sand.”
“No time like the present,” Patrick said. “Let’s go inside.” He walked up to the tower and slammed the butt of his shotgun against a window. The gun bounced off, the window still intact.
Ed barked out a laugh. “Let me show you how it’s done.” He slammed the butt of his gun hard against the window, grunting with effort, and he got the same result.
“Son of a bitch,” Ed muttered. He swung his gun around and fired into the window. That did the trick.
Alex glared at them both. “Wait for orders before you fire at a non-hostile target. I would have preferred not to let every vampire in the building know we were coming.”
“Sorry, Captain,” the brothers muttered in unison.
Alex walked toward the window. “Nothing to do about it now. The damage is done. Let’s go inside.”
The team made their way into the room, past the ruins of old furniture and out into the hallway beyond. Firef
ly brought up the rear. He stepped into the hallway and the door swung shut behind him with a thump, instantly darkening the space. They were truly in the vampires’ territory now—a cold, dead place cut off from the light of the sun.
They all turned on their headlamps, and Firefly tried the doorknob. It was locked.
“No worries,” Alex said. “We can always bust through it, if we need to.”
As they walked down the hallway, a low rumble came from the distance. The team froze.
Alex felt goosebumps spring up on her arms as she stood stone-still, listening. It didn’t sound like a vampire, but it took her a moment to figure it out. “It’s the wind. Rushing through the halls.”
The team let out a collective sigh of relief. “Not vampires,” Chuck said, “but still damn creepy.”
Owl pointed to a sign—it showed a simple depiction of a staircase and an arrow pointing left.
“Left, it is,” Alex said.
As they made their way down the hall, she noticed that Firefly’s three recruits—Shirley, Mario, and Henry—stuck close to their captain. It had been that way on every mission, and Alex had gotten used to it. Firefly’s people wore the same equipment as the rest of the GMT, complete with silver mail and jetpacks, so it was easy to look past them. The three had proven themselves competent, if still a little jumpy, but they worshiped Firefly a little too much for their own good. For the most part, they tended to hang back and let the GMT do the real work, which was fine with Alex.
“This place looks pretty great for having been abandoned for one hundred fifty years,” Patrick said. “Unless the vampires are keeping things tidy.”
“It’s the dry climate,” Owl said. “This place was sealed up like a tomb.”
“Not a wonderful analogy,” Patrick complained.
After a few minutes of walking, they reached the end of the hallway and a door marked “Stairs.”
Chuck tried the door, but it was stuck. Alex nodded to Wesley, who took out his cutter and went to work.
