Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  And I’ve got another one for you, he thought. A big one.

  Holmwood looked over at the pair of Operators standing beside the only helicopter that had not yet discharged its cargo.

  “Be ready,” he shouted.

  The two figures nodded, and took hold of the handle that would slide open the transport’s side door.

  “On my go,” shouted Holmwood.

  This is going to be something to see, he thought.

  Jamie dropped to one knee as the vampires who had avoided the ultraviolet light surged forward, raised his MP7 to his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger.

  Fire licked from the end of the gun’s barrel as bullets tore across the courtyard. The vampires at the front of the pack parted like liquid, sliding out of the path of the deadly hail of lead and continuing their charge; the ones behind them were not so lucky. Jamie’s bullets punched holes in their knees and thighs and ankles, shattering bone and sending blood spraying into the air. The smell hit his nose instantly; his eyes darkened, his fangs slid down from his gums, and a guttural growl of desire rumbled involuntarily from his throat.

  Half a dozen vampires crashed to the ground, screaming in pain, clutching at bullet holes the size of wine corks, their heads thrown back, their eyes flickering red. The air was suddenly full of the smell of cordite and a sound like metallic thunder as Jamie’s colleagues opened up on the advancing vampires. For a second, he was momentarily overwhelmed, as something he had never felt before exploded out from his stomach and filled him to the tips of his fingers.

  It was bloodlust, pure and simple.

  Jamie growled again, and flung himself towards the enemy.

  Captain John McDonnell turned his head, sending ultraviolet light sweeping to the left in a sharp arc; Viper 2’s spotlights had been slaved to the heads-up display projected on to the windscreen, and responded to the movement of sensors located in his visor. He drifted the helicopter left and craned his head further in the same direction, chasing a staggering vampire and enveloping him in ultraviolet light; he erupted with purple fire and slumped to the gravel, his hands beating weakly at the flames.

  McDonnell, who had served as a gunner in Apaches above the snow-capped rises and deep valleys of the Hindu Kush and the oilfields of southern Iraq before being recruited into NS9, and had seen more than his fair share of terrible things through a helicopter windscreen, never ceased to be amazed at the effect the purple light had on vampires; it barely had to touch them before they went up like roman candles.

  Like they’ve been soaked in jet fuel, he marvelled.

  The Apache swung back and up, angling her nose down as McDonnell searched for movement in the burning château. He was so engrossed in his task that he didn’t see the vampire hurtling up from beneath him, as silent and deadly as a shark rising from the depths.

  Valeri slammed into the underside of the gunship, his eyes blazing, his head pounding with fury. The helicopter lurched upwards and pitched wildly to the left, its engines screaming as he swooped away, then accelerated towards it again.

  He crashed into the windscreen, shattering it, and shoved himself into the cockpit, paying no attention to the strips of skin the broken plexiglass peeled from his arms and shoulders. The gunner cried out, and reached for his sidearm with one hand as the pilot tried desperately to stabilise the Apache; Valeri swung a fist with every ounce of strength he possessed, and hammered it into the man’s face. His head burst like a watermelon, gushing out from the shattered plastic of his helmet in a steaming torrent of blood, as his hands grabbed reflexively at nothing. Valeri surged forward, climbing over the gunner’s twitching corpse, and sank his fingers into the pilot’s throat. He tore it out with a sound like ripping paper, then turned back towards the broken windscreen, leaving the man gurgling out his final breaths.

  The Apache bucked and lurched, then spun helplessly towards the ground, its rotors churning futilely, its engines howling. Valeri punched out the remainder of the windscreen as the gravel courtyard rushed up towards him, threw himself through the hole, and pirouetted up and away from the stricken helicopter as it slammed nose first into the ground. There was a millisecond of silence, then the Apache exploded with a hammering thud of noise and heat as its fuel tanks breached, sending a mushroom cloud of orange fire and black smoke billowing into the air.

  Valeri was already moving, soaring above the courtyard with the heat of the explosion at his back. Viper 1 pivoted nimbly in the air, its ultraviolet spotlights sweeping towards him; he flung himself beneath them as the second Apache’s gunner fired his 30mm chain guns. The noise was simply astonishing, a deafening drumbeat of explosions so loud it felt as though bells were being slammed together inside Valeri’s skull. The heavy bullets ripped through the air as fire spat from the barrels of the guns, and Valeri dodged left and right, swooping and diving, flying for his life; he knew that a single one of the bullets could take off his arm or his leg and send him tumbling to the ground, where he would be easy meat for a fortunate Operator. He closed in on the gunship, faster than its targeting systems could follow, then raced between the purple beams and over the top of the squat, ugly helicopter.

  The punishing updraught of the rotors sent him tumbling, but he righted himself, and swooped out of the turbulent air before the pilot had time to bring the Apache about. He caught hold of the gunship’s long fuselage in front of its vertical tail rotor, and punched a fist through the thin metal housing. The pilot, clearly aware of where Valeri was, spun the Apache in a stomach-churning arc, but the ancient vampire dug in, his knuckles white, the muscles in his arms screaming, and kept his grip. He reached inside the helicopter, grabbed hold of handfuls of wires and cables, and tore them out.

  The effect was immediate.

  Above Valeri’s head, the tail rotors spluttered and whined as sparks leapt from the ragged hole he had made. Where the helicopter had felt immovable, even to him, like something he had to simply hang on to and hope for the best, it suddenly felt like dead weight, as though he had become the only thing keeping it in the air. Its nose tipped precariously towards the ground, and Valeri went with it, letting the Apache swing beneath him; as it rose back up, he let go of its tail.

  The black gunship flipped end over end, its engines dead, and slammed on to the gravel. It skidded forward, digging a long ditch and throwing up a huge cloud of dust, and crashed into the row of transport helicopters. The first was cracked almost in half by the sliding Apache, its rotor blades breaking and exploding across the courtyard like razor-sharp bullets. Metal shrieked like a wounded animal as the gunship ploughed forward, dragging half of the first transport with it, and came to a halt with its nose stuck through the open door of the second.

  Below Valeri, shouts of alarm mingled with screams of pain. He wasted no time waiting to see whether the second Apache would explode as gloriously as the first; he fixed his gaze on the devastated eastern side of the château, and accelerated towards it.

  Larissa threw aside the dripping head of a vampire and faced the ruined building.

  Behind her, thick black smoke billowed up from the remains of the burning Apache, and she could hear shouted orders and torrents of swearing and cursing from the men and women gathered at the line of transports, one of which now lay in broken pieces. With the ultraviolet beams extinguished, the purple fire covering the vampires quickly died away, leaving a smoking pile of blackened, roasted bodies.

  A vampire woman in her fifties leapt towards Larissa as something streaked across the courtyard, so fast it was little more than a blur; it rocketed over the heads of men and women moving and shooting and biting and clawing, the noise of guns and T-Bones mingling with screams of pain and howls of terror. Larissa turned, saw the vampire woman’s eyes widen with surprise, and swung a fist with all the power of a wrecking ball. It slammed into the side of the woman’s head, shattering her skull and sending her flying through the air, her limbs dangling uselessly, the red glow in her eyes snuffed out. She crashed into a jagged fragment o
f the château’s east wall and crumpled to the ground in an ungainly heap.

  Larissa turned back towards the devastated centre of the old building, searching for the source of the blur that had moved overhead. She focused her supernaturally sharp eyes in time to see Valeri Rusmanov plough into the pile of burnt vampires, sending charred limbs and ragged lumps of seared red and black meat into the air. When the pile was cleared, he bellowed at the ground, then turned and threw himself back into the fight.

  Instantly, vampires began to once more spill up out of the château’s cellars. They spat and hissed as they emerged, their clothes and bodies smeared with dust and blood, their glowing eyes settling on the black-clad figures of Red Team.

  High above the courtyard, Dracula watched and smiled as battle was joined in earnest.

  He had been surprised and impressed by the initial tactics of his enemy; the bomb that had exploded with such beautiful, devastating force was the attack of an opponent for whom victory was the only thing that mattered, and following it by pinning his forces underground with ultraviolet light had been a masterstroke. It had taken self-restraint not to applaud, even as Valeri’s followers screamed and burned below him; their forces had sustained significant casualties by the time his oldest servant made short work of the helicopters and their deadly beams. Dracula was not worried, however; he knew he was watching the early stages of the battle, that it was still taking shape and settling down.

  There had been times in his youth when his cause had appeared lost within minutes of the trumpeters falling silent, but on each occasion his forces had eventually triumphed. He knew, better than anyone alive, that battles always came down to will, to who would risk the most for the sake of victory, which was why what was unfolding in the courtyard below was so fascinating; there could be no retreat here, no settlement or negotiated peace. Both sides would fight to their last breath, because what was at stake was not ideology, or religion, or some gilded throne.

  At stake was annihilation.

  Far below, Valeri cleared the smouldering remains away from the entrances to the cellars, and Dracula watched as a new wave of vampires poured up into the courtyard. He smiled to himself, enjoying the cold air as it floated across his skin, observing the battlefield with expert eyes. His enemy’s second force was still gathered at the treeline, close to what remained of the helicopters they had arrived in. The influx of vampires from beneath the château would now surely draw them into the battle, and once reinforcements were no longer a factor, the tide would turn one way or the other.

  And then I will know, he thought. Whether I am to remain a mere spectator, or whether I will be required to bloody my hands.

  And as he watched the black figures moving among the trees at the edge of the courtyard, he realised how fervently he hoped it would be the latter.

  Cal Holmwood bellowed for Blue Team to regroup; they had been scattered by the explosion of the first Apache and the crash of the second that had taken out two of their transports. They fell quickly back into line, their faces hidden behind purple visors, as the Interim Director surveyed the battlefield.

  The men and women of the Combined Operational Force were fighting with every bit of the skill and courage he had expected, firing and staking and sending blood gushing into the air as they drove the vampires back across the courtyard. But the fighting had already claimed a number of casualties; strewn around the wide space were the dark shapes of fallen Operators, their bodies twisted into unnatural angles, wide pools of crimson spreading beneath them.

  Holmwood could not allow himself to think about them.

  Not now.

  They had pressed their early advantage well, but new vampires were emerging from the burning château in a seemingly endless torrent, and it was vital that he kept momentum moving in their favour.

  Cal turned to the Operators stationed outside the sealed transport helicopter; they looked at him expectantly, their gloved hands gripping the handles of the door.

  “Go,” he said.

  The huge wolf poked its snout through the helicopter’s open door and sniffed the cold night air. There was heat, and violence, and blood, and the sweet, sharp smell of fear, of animals cornered and desperate. A low growl rumbled from its throat, shaking the metal box in which it had been locked for too long.

  The wolf’s mind was a swirling mixture of anger and frustration, held in check by the tiny part of itself that was still Victor Frankenstein. The memory of the change was fresh, full of the sharp sounds of cracking bones and screams that had become howls as its body was reshaped against its will. The desire to run, to clear away the pain, roared through its head. During its long confinement in the helicopter, it had remained dimly aware of where it was, and what was happening to it; now such almost rational thoughts were gone, driven away by the tantalising scents that filled its nostrils, by the joyful instinct to chase, and hunt.

  To kill.

  The wolf stepped out of the transport, its huge paws crunching the gravel beneath them, its tail sweeping from side to side, and took a longer, deeper breath. The night air was intoxicating, an almost physical thing that existed far beyond the sensation of mere human beings. Frankenstein’s remaining consciousness drank it in, savouring the single thing that he always missed when the moon waned and his body broke back to normal; the air made him feel like he was profoundly connected to the world around him, rather than floating obliviously across the surface.

  The wolf’s vision began to focus; the pitch darkness of the metal box had dulled the sharpness of its huge yellow eyes, but now they were clearing. Shapes surged back and forth across the curved field, their visible selves mixing with the scents that emanated so clearly from their bodies, creating something that was both less and more than sight. Many of the shapes roared with heat, glowing a colour that was impossible to describe, and Frankenstein’s last coherent thought before he began to run was to desperately order himself not to hurt the shapes that were dark and cold.

  The wolf took a step forward, its huge head sweeping left and right, its growl deepening and rising in volume, then another, and another. Then it was running, bounding forward on legs that felt as strong as tree trunks, the wind whipping through its fur, the mingled sensation utterly indescribable; an ecstasy of primal physical movement and a profound feeling of fulfilled purpose.

  It ran towards the hot, billowing square of the building, racing across the ground, its tongue hanging joyously from the corner of its mouth. The smells of blood and fear intensified as it reached the edge of the battle, triggering sensory explosions inside a mind that was now almost entirely animal, and it accelerated towards a figure at the centre of its vision, a pillar of heat and light and cruel pleasure. The wolf ran forward, relishing the cries of surprise and blooms of terror that accompanied its passing, and leapt gracefully into the air.

  For a glorious moment, there was nothing in the entire world except the animal and the cold air rushing over its body. Then it crashed into the glowing figure, its huge front paws sinking their claws into its shoulders and driving it to the ground. The pain that erupted from the pores of the thrashing, squirming vampire was exquisite, and the wolf drove its claws deeper, allowing itself a moment to savour the resulting scream. Then it turned its long snout to the side, opened a mouth full of teeth the length of carving knives, and clamped its jaws round the vampire’s throat.

  A gout of blood, hot and bittersweet, spurted from the torn jugular, filling the wolf’s mouth. The animal reared back, tearing out the meat and muscle of the neck and leaving the vampire’s head attached by only the dripping bones of his spine, and swallowed. Blood and flesh tumbled down its gullet and a sensation spread through its body that was far more than just pleasure; it was a deep sense of happiness.

  The wolf threw back its head and howled, a vast sound that chilled the bones of everyone who heard it. Then it charged across the battlefield, the stricken vampire already forgotten, its mind focused entirely on its next kill.

 
Valentin Rusmanov watched the massive grey-green wolf stalk a vampire who had to be at least in his early forties, and allowed himself a small smile.

  The vampire was backpedalling furiously, his hands raised in a futile gesture of surrender as the animal came for him, its snout low to the ground, a growl that sounded strangely close to laughter rumbling from its blood-soaked muzzle. It was toying with him, swiping its huge paws lazily through the air, until it eventually got bored and leapt forward, pinning the screaming, pleading vampire to the ground. As the jaws snapped shut and the scream was silenced, Valentin found himself empathising with the misshapen creature.

  He was bored too.

  As he moved forward with the rest of Red Team, he had felt an emotion that he had not been expecting: a strong, strange rush of nostalgia. When he looked back on the life he had led as a human, it was predominantly with a sense of shame; not for the things he had done to men and women who had not deserved them, but for the meek, subservient creature he had once been. He had turned his back on his family after Dracula had been rendered dormant by Van Helsing and his friends, and he had never regretted the decision for a single moment; if anything, he wished he had made it sooner. But as he flew forward, his eyes full of fire, with an enemy before him and comrades at his sides, nostalgia had filled him, if only for a moment. He had fought so many battles, against so many enemies, and there was always a moment when the reasons and the justifications faded away, leaving only the fighting itself, short and violent and thrilling, and the outcome.

  Win or lose.

  Live or die.

  Valentin had destroyed three vampires within the first two minutes of the battle, tearing out their hearts and crushing them before they had time to realise what had befallen them; they had burst with looks of genuine surprise on their faces. His uniform was already coated with steaming blood and strings of exploded flesh, but he paid the mess no attention; his eyes glowed crimson as he slid through the flailing, swinging vampires, as quick and sure-footed as they were panicked and undisciplined. The number of punches and kicks and swipes of clubs and blades aimed at him made it clear that he was a highly sought-after target, the result, no doubt, of orders given by his older brother, or his former master, or both. But Valentin was so much more powerful than the average vampire that he might as well have been a different species, and not a single hand had been laid on him thus far.