The CIA men shared frightened glances.
May felt a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. “Oh no . . .”
“We got this video a few hours ago from our liaison at the FSB. There was an attack on a facility the Russians were using to hold vampires.”
The Russians were far more direct in their vampire response than this administration had allowed Red Storm to be. “Facility, as in one of their secret prisons they’re using to experiment on vampires . . . Come on, I’m not stupid. All professional courtesy to my Russian colleagues, those boys don’t fuck around. When a Russian grows fangs and starts eating people, they don’t stop to open dialogs about civil liberties.”
“This recording is from a few days ago,” said the minion with the TV remote.
“That’s remarkably forthcoming by Ivan’s standards.”
“The FSB really thought we should see this,” Stuart said.
The camera had been set on a desk or something of equivalent height. It showed a room filled with computers and monitors. There was blood spatter and bullet holes on the walls. The angle wasn’t quite right to see for sure, but there were hints of bodies; a bit of red-stained clothing peeking around the back of a swivel chair, a shape in the corner that might be an outstretched hand, and peeking into the edge of the picture was a mass of blonde hair without any clue what it was attached to.
Blood began to pool under the hair.
There was movement in front of the camera, and a torso appeared, wearing Russian body armor and covered in mag pouches. The man pulled up a chair and sat directly in front of the camera. His face was momentarily covered, and the General realized that was because he was wiping blood from his mouth with a rag—No . . . a lab coat. Face cleaned, he tossed the lab coat aside.
“I am Marko Kovac. This is my declaration of war.”
He appeared entirely human, though he looked much younger and stronger than the last time they’d met in person. Marko was in his fifties, but what was age to a vampire? They still weren’t sure about that. But his eyes . . . They were different. They were frighteningly vacant of anything approaching humanity.
“This message is for the leaders of the efforts against vampires, and especially for my old friend, General May, of America’s Operation Red Storm. I can’t say that I was surprised to hear that you got the job. I have just finished liberating a vampire prison in Siberia. I’m sure most of you know of the place, even if you won’t ever admit it. By the time you watch this, I’ll be long gone, but don’t worry. I took a few souvenirs. All those millions of vampires that are still sitting on the fence, thinking they can sneak by, or live in peace with you . . . Once they see that humans consider us nothing more than lab rats, they’ll join the cause.”
“The videos are already all over the internet,” Stuart supplied. “NSA is trying to track the origins.”
But that wasn’t the part that had concerned the General.
When Kovac smiled, he didn’t even have fangs. “You heard me correctly. Millions. Not thousands . . . millions. I’ve seen your estimates. You have no idea how wrong you are. Most of us are hiding in plain sight. There are more of us every day. The virus has swept the planet, but the awakening isn’t instantaneous. For some, it is faster than others. So far, you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. The newly awakened have an advantage over the first of us . . . They know how the humans around them will react, so they’ll continue playing at their mortal lives, pretending to be like you. They’ll live with you by day and hunt you by night. The more they kill, the more you fear them, the more desperately you search. You’ve got no choice. The vampires among you have access to your food, your infrastructure, your money, even your secrets, so you can’t afford not to eradicate us. So you have to push, and that means you’ll make us push back. There are suckers on both sides who think we can work this out, but that’s wishful thinking. You know it, and I know it, but the rest of the world hasn’t caught on yet. I will convince the undecided.”
General May knew exactly where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
“One of the first things you taught me, General, was that if you’re going to fight a war, you fight to win. Anything other than a total commitment gets your men killed. Your governments are weak. They want peace. They don’t realize they should want survival. Your hands are tied. Mine won’t be. Vampires are coming for you. I will train them. I will arm them. I will forge them into the scythe that will harvest you like wheat. There won’t be any frontal assaults in this war. This is a war of attrition and time is on my side. This is a war of shadows and that is where we live. Every time a dam breaks or plane crashes, when vampires bomb your cities or poison your water, you’ll wonder if that was me. Only you’ll never know the answer for sure.”
His voice had gotten deeper and deeper as he spoke. There was no trace of the good man General May had known before. Kovac got out of the chair and picked up the video camera. The view temporarily shifted to show that the hair belonged to a young woman missing half her neck, then it was back on Kovac’s face
“From this point on, my existence is like a black hole. You will only know I am real by the absence of light.”
The picture went black.
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
General May studied the latest reports. Killings were happening all over the country, and they were occurring at a steadily increasing pace, and beneath those average murders, he looked for a pattern. His search was interrupted by a knock on the frame of his open office door. It was one of his V-8 strike team leaders. “You wanted to see me, General?”
He returned the salute. “Yes, I do. Close the door and take a seat, Captain.”
He was a handsome young man, and all indications were that he was one hell of a soldier. His strike team loved him. It was saying something when a twenty-six-year-old, newly promoted Captain could command that much respect from a group made up of hardened combat vets. The Captain waited, probably suspecting that he’d done something wrong, because why else would the General in charge of Red Storm call him in for anything other than an ass chewing.
“I read your report on Peoria. Moving that soon after hitting the ground was a gutsy call.”
The Captain tried to think of a good response that might lessen the expected ass chewing. “I assessed the situation. The lead vampire seemed erratic. I recognized what type he was, and how he was behaving made me think the hostages were in imminent danger, so I made the call.”
“You smoked four vampires, rescued twenty school kids, and your men didn’t get so much as a scratch on them. Excellent work.”
“I have an excellent team, sir. They train hard.”
“Take the compliment, Captain. I don’t give them very often.”
That put him slightly more at ease. He even smiled a bit. “Thank you, sir.”
This was more difficult that he’d expected it to be, but he had to plow forward. “I’m putting together a team for a special assignment. I’m thinking you might be an asset for it, but first I need to ask you a few difficult questions. I want your no-bullshit response. This isn’t a PowerPoint to make the General happy. No political correctness. I need to know the God’s honest truth of how you see some things, Captain.”
It was obvious he hadn’t expected General May to call him in to discuss philosophy. “Yes, sir.”
“I think you know vampires better than anyone. You’ve worked with Luther Swann several times now and I know you’ve read all his stuff. He thinks we can coexist with vampires. Do you?”
“That’s a tough one, sir. Personally, I like Dr. Swann. I think he’s a smart guy and he means well. The President says that we can and we should try to—”
“This is off the record. Don’t blow smoke up my ass. Can humans and vampires coexist peacefully?”
“Some of the types? Maybe. There are a few mutations where they can survive without feeding off of humans. Them, you can treat it like a genetic disorder.”
“And for the
rest.”
“Most of them . . .” The Captain paused, probably deciding how bad he wanted to sabotage his career. “No. Not only no, but hell no. I’m sorry, sir, and I know we answer to a civilian authority, so I will follow my orders, but I don’t think they realize what we’re up against out there. The people talking about coexisting are living in ivory towers. This is an academic thought exercise for them. They’ve not crawled down in the corpse piles like I have, or looked some ghoul in the face while it’s eating a baby it just sucked out of a pregnant woman.”
“So you think that our direction is incorrect?”
The Captain swallowed hard. He was treading on dangerous ground and he knew it. “We’re their food, sir. Sure, we can coexist, just like we do with cows.”
“And what about their civil liberties?”
“I’m a very big fan of the Constitution, General, and I took a solemn oath to defend it. I had to think long and hard about that when I accepted this assignment. All the guys on the strike teams have to. These aren’t foreign soldiers. They’re not even terrorists. A little while ago they were regular folks who got a disease. I believe all men are created equal and should enjoy equal protection under the law, but these . . . things . . . the feeders, and the ghouls, and the suckers and freaks, the heart stealers, and the spear tongues, they are not men anymore. If somebody gets infected, turns, and they never harm a fly, I’ve got no problem with them, but the others . . . Give me a clean shot and I will put them in the ground.”
The Captain was a tough one, but considering some of the weird, violent shit he’d seen over the last year, it wasn’t a surprise. “And what about the regular folks that turn? They were good people before. Hypothetically speaking, do you think they’re actually still the same person they were before? Do you think they’ve just been overpowered by the disease?”
“No, General, they aren’t the same person they were before. The way I see it, once they’ve crossed that line, there’s no coming back. They have to be destroyed. By their fruits, ye shall know them.”
“Are you a religious man, Captain?”
“Does it matter?”
“For this assignment, yes.”
He nodded. “I wasn’t before I had this job, but when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, there comes a point when blaming a virus doesn’t cut it . . . This may sound crazy, General, and I don’t know what else to call it, but I believe in the soul . . . I know that in some of these vampires at least, when they turn, that human soul is gone. It’s extinguished. Replaced. By what, I can’t tell you, but it is evil. Pure, absolute, literal evil.”
“That’ll do . . .” General May picked up a folder which had been sealed in red tape. He handed it across the desk. “We need to talk about what really happened to your father. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Captain Kovac.”
THIS IS THE ONE which I always refer to as my Green Beret Vampire story.
The V Wars series is an interesting shared world concept. The basic idea is that all of the world’s vampire legends originate because of a virus which has been dormant for centuries. When the virus escapes into the world again, people with certain genetic markers begin turning into vampires. It gets pretty crazy.
At this point in the storyline, humanity and vampires have gone to war. Since humans have superior numbers and resources, I went to a friend of mine who has provided me with a lot of technical advice before. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in Army Special Forces before going to work for a federal law enforcement agency, and now his son is an Army officer. So I asked him what he would do if he turned into a vampire. Authors’ friends get asked all sorts of weird questions like that. His answers were so chilling that I just stuck him in the story.
It turns out the last person you’d want turning into a vampire is somebody who studies how to overthrow governments for a living. I want to thank Marcus Custer for all the brilliant technical advice he’s given me over the years.
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM STRANGER, INTERDIMENSIONAL INSURANCE AGENT
This story was originally only available in audiobook, produced by Audible Studios, and narrated by Adam Baldwin. This is the first time that it has appeared in print.
CHAPTER 1:
Tom’s 9 AM Client Meeting
Washington D.C.
Earth #345-B-98081
PRESIDENT BALDWIN surveyed the White House underground war bunker. The greatest minds in the country were gathered there, appropriate for their greatest time of crisis. It had only been two days since a hole had been torn between worlds and the invasion had begun, but already all of Europe and half of Asia had been conquered and consumed by the slimy purple bastards.
The Secretary of Defense stood at the front of the room, giving the most important PowerPoint presentation in human history. SecDef had even worn his nicest eye patch. It was the black one with the embroidered USMC bulldog on it. The fate of all mankind rested on the decisions that would be made in this room in the next few minutes. So, of course, PowerPoint wasn’t working. They’d wasted ten minutes trying to get it running.
“Piece of crap skuzz-knuckle pisspot!” the SecDef shouted as he kicked the projector. “What’s the deal, Ed?”
“It says it suffered a fatal error,” the Secretary of Education said as he poked ineffectually at the keys.
“Fatal error?” SecDef drew his .45. SecEd was smart enough to get the hell out of the way. “I’ll show you a fatal error!” POTUS covered his ears just in time as the computer exploded in a very satisfactory manner. The Secret Service detail was used to these kinds of outbursts, and barely raised their collective eyebrows.
Tom Stranger was seated just behind POTUS. He leaned forward to whisper, “It doesn’t really matter which dimension you’re in, Mr. President. Windows still does that. There’s even one Earth where Bill Gates’ cyborg head is god-emperor, and they’re still forced to use Vista.”
POTUS shuddered at the thought.
“Syphilitic monkey bangers,” SecDef grumbled. “I’ll do this the old fashioned way!” He snapped his fingers and two generals and an admiral brought in a dry-erase board. “Dismissed, you wretched sphincter stains!” SecDef bellowed as he drew a dry-erase marker from his dry-erase marker holster. He popped the cap and started drawing stick figure versions of the alien invaders.
“They call themselves the Horde of Righteous Purification, but they don’t talk much, because they’re usually too busy eating babies!” SecDef deftly drew a frowny face on one of the blobs. Then he thought better of it and drew a bunch of sharp teeth as well. “They travel from planet to planet. They face-hump the ever-livin’ snot outta that planet, eat everything, steal all the resources, and then stick a black hole in the core before they leave, just to be dicks about it!”
“Have we tried negotiating with them, Mr. President?” the Secretary of Health and Human Services asked.
POTUS groaned. He didn’t really know what Health and Human Services did. “Duh. You think I’m stupid, Tina? Of course we did. But they ate the ambassador. And then they ate the Secretary of State. Then they ate his dog. We even tried playing the keyboard, like in that one movie with the mashed potato mountain, but they ate John Tesh, too. John Tesh and his keyboard! I’ve depopulated half the State Department. It was like an all-you-can-eat bureaucrat buffet.”
“But what if we were nice to the—”
SecDef hurled his dry-erase marker at the SecHeHum. “Shut your pie hole, hippie!” Sadly, because he only had one eye, he lacked depth perception and struck the Press Secretary in the nose. But the Secretary of Health and Human Services hid under the table just in case. Victorious, SecDef drew another marker from his holster, purple this time, and continued his briefing.
“The Horde lives for war. They’ve been biologically augmented for the last million years to be perfect killing machines. They don’t have tanks. They are tanks!” He colored the many tentacles and murder sparklers and eyeball cannons purple. “Their air power is made up of giant purple pterodactyl
s, with scramjets for buttholes. They fart themselves to Mach 4 and sexually assault F-22s!” He switched to red to draw flames as little stick figure human soldiers were crushed mercilessly beneath the tentacles. “Their vats grow a fully combat-effective Death-Mauler in ten minutes!” SecDef made explodey noises as he drew.
“And you don’t even want to know about their Harvesters!” POTUS added.
“What do they harvest?” the Secretary of Agriculture asked suspiciously. He knew a thing or two about harvesting.
“Scrotums!” SecDef shouted.
Every man in the room cringed and crossed their legs protectively. “Nuke ’em!” screamed SecEd as he pounded the conference table. “Nuke the hell out of ’em!”
The room began to chant “Nuke! Nuke! Nuke!”
“That’s the spirit!” SecDef answered. “Too bad we’ve been nuking them left and right since breakfast. France is now a glass parking lot with permanent nuclear winter so the Horde went ice skating on it! They are immune to radiation, bullets, electricity, disease, lava, and personal insults. We’ve tried everything. They sweat nitro and sneeze acid, and when they’re not killing, they’re practicing killing, or sharpening things so they can do some stab-killing! They exist only to blow things up . . .” he trailed off, a single tear forming in his good eye. “My God, they’re beautiful.”
The greatest minds available began to panic, which was understandable, since half the world’s population had died in the last twenty-four hours. But POTUS knew he needed to get this situation under control, right the hell now, so he stood and flung his chair dramatically across the room. He went through a lot of chairs that way, but it got the point across. He’d risen to fame and popularity by playing a decisive man of action during the five seasons of the number one most successful Libertarian Space Cowboy show ever to air on television, so everyone knew not to screw with him. The room grew quiet.
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