by J. B. Garner
"Containment is our top priority, team," Ex reminded over the coms. "We're sealed in until we have a pile of staked bodies."
"Land's sake, there's a ton of 'em!" Hex's exclamation was right by me as I heard him stereo over the coms. Three had bee-lined for him as he burst in, more swarmed past. A few that had initially made for the door rerouted towards the depths of the bar with its few scattered patrons. Even if I didn't have an innate sense of the value of human life, I really didn't want to have these things multiply more.
"Hex's busy, people, and we have normals in danger," I called as I moved, ignoring the barkeep for the moment. Another point not in Creepy's favor was that the vampires ignored him, bleeding scrapes and all. I hopped over a bar table to try to intercept one of the corpses. Though the vampires were infinitely faster moving than I was, in the cramped quarters of the bar, that was only a minimal advantage. This particular one had already snatched a middle-aged woman out of her chair and pinned her to the wall. Like his brother, this creature moved with swift deliberation instead of feral anger and wore well-maintained military gear. I was ready to stake him from behind during his momentary distraction when I caught another bar patron about to be snack food out of the corner of my eye.
Without hesitation, I twisted and hurled the jagged chair leg like a javelin. There was no way I could manage a heart shot at this range and from his partial side profile, but the leg did drive solidly into its arm, bringing a loud, inhuman screech. It would be enough of a distraction for now.
It had certainly distracted my initial target from his meal. I barely managed to duck its initial backhand. If I hadn't been expecting a reprisal and already been moving, I wouldn't have been so lucky. I swung a hard right hand into the creature's ribs as I dug in my coat for one of the wooden stakes we had lathed at the Foundation; though these corpses were in better shape, they were still corpses. My hand messily crushed into rotting flesh, sending the vampire staggering back a step in surprise, or was it recognition? A part of my accelerated mind thought about that as I pulled out my stake. The vampire trumped my stake with a machine pistol. The thought that I was going to die by a vampire terrorist shooting me in a White Power bar was so absurd I almost laughed as he pulled the trigger.
The reality of physics is that, barring an outrageous circumstance, no human can dodge a bullet, not even me. If I had space, I could have watched his aim and accounted for that or seen his trigger finger twitch and dove. We were literally fist to fist, eye to eye when the gun went off with a staccato burst. I was most certainly, despite the tough leather and padding of my suit, going to be blown through with holes. It was quite the surprise when I did not. It hurt with a pain I can't put into words as the rubber bullets smashed into my chest and abdomen, even through the wall of willpower that normally shunted pain away. The sheer impact knocked me off of my feet and into one of the cheap tables, collapsing it under the impact.
I was wheezing for breath, flat on my back and struggling to regain my focus, when another hole exploded in the front of the building. The Human Tank roared through the hole with Medusa riding on his back. Being the only person on the team with any kind of extra-normal reflexes, I could forgive their slow entrance. Medusa pounced off of Tank onto one of the monsters that had already bitten into a teenaged kid who picked the wrong bar to flash his fake ID at. Her halo of snakes hissed evilly as she drove the vampire to the ground. Tank, for his part, saw me. I couldn't blame him for the obvious conclusion that must have run through his head. I couldn't even gasp out a correction.
The poor guy didn't even say anything coherent; he just yelled, a yell fueled by the raging cauldron of emotion called puberty and the anger at seeing his friend 'dead', and tore a direct path to my shooter. Flooring, furniture, everything smashed in Tank's path, debris flying everywhere. I somehow mustered the strength to roll off the smashed table, providing me with a little cover from the impending impact. The vampire spun and fired a quick burst of rubber bullets which had about zero effect on the rampaging cyborg teen. A split-second later, Tank impacted dead-on with the corpse.
Messy doesn't begin to describe the after-effects of the impact. An arm went one way, a foot and part of the shin that way, most of the rest flew straight back from the hit. Every piece sent a spray of blood and rotting tissue in it's wake. I considered and denied the request to roll over and vomit continuously. Instead I managed one complete gasping breath and sat up.
Tank hadn't noticed my miraculous recovery as he ground his treads back and forth over the vampire's body. It was still trying to regenerate from the horrific injuries, a disgusting display that caused my stomach to flip once again. Medusa seemed to have better, if more painful, luck as she goaded the vampire into a bite which she blocked with her arm. The fangs dug through her tough scales, but it put those undead eyes right up the the snake-woman's own supernatural gaze with bizarre results. I could only watch for a moment as I tried to pick myself back up, but it was a dance of unreal forces: Medusa's gaze turning tissue to stone while the vampire's nature tried to return it to undead flesh. It didn't matter that neither seemed to win; the constant state of flux seemed to effectively incapacitate the monster.
"Alive," was all I could croak into the swirling mass of com chatter. I was hurting too bad to parse the rest, though my focus was returning as I stood up. Tank's roaring rampage of revenge stopped and he spun to look at me, eyes watering with tears.
"Indy Indy Indy!" The big kid would have grabbed me in a bear hug if there hadn't been there hadn't been the tell-tale clack-clack of an assault rifle's charging handle. Instincts kicked into overdrive and I dove for the only hard cover around: Tank. In addition to being, well, a super-cyborg, his chassis produced some kind of protective energy shield. While it didn't exist for me, it was quite effective against all sorts of other hazards.
Mr. Skewered-With-A-Table-Leg unleashed a full clip of ammunition in our direction. Thank God that Tank's field had been large enough to protect the innocent drunk we had just saved from the first vamp. The air was filled with the sparks of bullets impacting air and deflecting aside, then a brief silence.
I took a glance over Tank's chassis just as the vampire threw his gun down. I could read his body language. He was about to take a hostage. There was no way I was going to let that happen, at least that's what I told myself. The truth is that what I tried to do was nigh-impossible, but damn if I didn't go for it.
For the brief moment the vampire was still facing forward, as his rifle hit the ground, I hopped up on Tank's back and hurled the stake I still had in hand. Yes, I knew exactly where the heart was and no, it was highly unlikely, even with my unleashed potential, that I could hit that mark. However, maybe to make up for all the bad luck in my life lately, this one time Lady Luck cut me a break.
The stake hit dead on, slipping through that one gap in the ribs and sternum where it could hit the heart without obstruction. The creature clawed at it and, with a final look of disbelief, fell backwards, the Push shell fading away, returning it to it's natural corpse state. The older gentleman that had been about to be eaten by Mr. Stake fainted dead away. That was probably the safest thing he could do.
"I'm so happy to see -" Tank tried to start again, but interrupted himself with a "holy crab cakes!" Suddenly, his entire front end pitched up and back. I fell off first, barely rolling clear as Tank himself toppled awkwardly back, hitting his head on a table first, then crashing sideways. The vampire he had smashed apart and ground under his treads had managed to reassemble itself in just those few moments, standing in tattered clothes with a triumphant snarl.
Tank furiously tried to right himself with faint luck. The beast pounced at me, either to bite or just snap me like a twig. I vetoed both of those proposals, kicking up with both feet and launching the corpse against the rafters, making a nice crater in the plaster. Clambering sideways to avoid gravity's inevitable pull, I rummaged for my second stake. As the vampire crashed back to the floor with barely any obvious damage, my
hand came back with a snapped and mangled stake. It had (back to my usual bad luck) been in the path of at least two of those rubber bullets and was now a mostly unusable mess. I spun the remains of the sharp end and held it in between my knuckles, hoping that Tank would get up, even if I knew that was probably not going to happen.
"Boss wants you, but I'm too hungry, sorry," the thing hissed as it blurred towards me. I could barely understand it, with how fast it spoke. As I twisted away from it's initial grab, delivering a sharp scratch with my wooden poker in return, I had a realization. They had been talking, coordinating this entire time. The speech had just been so fast, so high-frequency, human ears couldn't hear it. Hopefully I would live long enough to use that fact. Fortunately, even with my stakes broken, I had an ace in the hole as I reached for my neck.
Or I was supposed to have. In my fevered state earlier, I had forgotten the crucifix from Underground. I cursed my human weakness as a vampire's hand grasped my throat. I instantly responded by driving the sharp nub of wood deep into it's forearm, but the creature didn't relent, despite the pain. Just like a human could try to ignore his instincts to pain, these rational vampires could do the same.
"Milady is NOT on the menu, you scallywag!" There was the distinct twang of the Argent Archer's mechanized crossbow and the vampire grew a wooden arrow through the chest. The choking grasp around my neck abated as the corpse fell to the floor. Archer was standing in the hole Tank made, having fired a bolt with pinpoint accuracy through the finale of the melee between Medusa and the other vampire, the now debris-laden bar, and with just enough force to punch through the beast but not impale me in the process. It wasn't a bad shot, not at all.
Unlike most Push Heroes, I didn't make time for chatter, so I simply nodded to Archer and, with a grunt of exertion, helped Tank get himself upright again. Medusa drove a bar stool leg first into her half-stone-half-flesh opponent, which caused the creature to turn entirely into very bizarre lawn sculpture.
"Party is hot outside, if you lovely people could come help?" Ex queried in his harried, 'the-plan-is-falling-apart' voice. Yes, we had been in enough bad situations that I could pick that voice out. I hopped on Tank's back and clapped his shoulder.
"They coordinate. High-frequency speech," I got out over the mic. My voice sounded like hell and I still felt very wheezy from the rubber bullets earlier. I had a feeling something might be cracked or bruised worse than I wanted. "We're coming."
The largest part of the vampire pack had hit outside in an attempt to escape. I could only guess there was some sort of limitation to their ability to turn to fog, as it was obvious that several had done so but couldn't escape the dome, despite the lack of an air-tight seal. Still, the unnatural mist didn't help with the raging melee. The shadowy figures of the corpses seemed to vanish and reappear in the billows of fog at will to make attacks.
Hexagon and Extinguisher were back-to-back, while Mind's Eye hovered above their heads with an honor guard of several telekinetically controlled shafts of wood. None of my friends were unscathed. Even Hexagon's nigh-invulnerable skin had bloody scratches and holes from fangs in it. There was a messy circle of at least six corpses around them, mostly staked but two were simply flash-frozen blocks of meat.
"The cavalry has arrived and we're ready to stake vampire tails," Tank shouted as we ramped out the hole. That did attract us attention in the mists as we were immediately flanked by creatures on either side. The first ate one of Tank's plasma blasts and charred nicely as Medusa drove a pool stick from the bar into it's chest. The other was lanced through the side by a mechanically-drive wooden arrow, shooting it across the street, down but still mobile.
"We need to see," I found myself saying pointlessly. The Whiteout's influence was unavoidable sometimes. I had a thought pop into my head as Tank rolled out to join the defensive formation. "These fogged ones ... they aren't actual gas or they could seep out the cracks in the shell. Density dispersion or something, I think."
"This is going somewhere right, Indy?" Ex said, throwing up an ice wall right in the face of a charging vampire before impaling it to said wall with the sudden growth of crystalline spikes.
"When do her musings not?" Mind's Eye pointed out, spearing the trapped vampire with a levitating stake.
"Mind, can you push out omnidirectionally with your TK, but at low power?" I asked, focusing on the plan instead of the vampires swirling around. I only hoped we could contain this before one of them thought to bring heavy ordinance into play. Archer had said that weapons crate had explosives in it, after all. "We need a constant unbroken field."
"Ah," the Indian psychic intoned. "Yes, I will make it happen."
"Zounds, now I grasp yon intellect," the Crusader enthused. "Jolly good!"
"Everyone, huddle up," I ordered. I tried to only rarely to put myself in charge, even now that Ex and I weren't an item. He was the leader of the Atlanta Five and I had no problem delegating that authority. At the end of the day, though, everyone wound up looking to me for the final play. "Mind, the second we're together -"
"Of course, I am ready."
It was only a moment before we were all together in a defensive circle, ready for anything. It was obvious to the creatures in the fog that something was up. Now that I knew to listen for it, I could hear the faintest edge of their high-pitched speech even if I couldn't understand it. If this didn't work, we would most likely be in trouble.
There was no need for a signal. Mind's Eye was a precise, brilliant person with impeccable timing. The moment we were together, there was a radiating pulse of invisible force. To me, it was only a very faint breeze, but I could see the others waver slightly against the psionic field. As the telekinetic sphere radiated against the fog, it steadily pushed it back. I could see through the lens of my heightened senses that it wasn't just pushing away in unconnected clumps as a normal cloud. Instead, I could just barely make out how each 'cloud' seemed to move as a unit. There were four distinct clouds I could see, each one no doubt being one gaseous vampire. When the wave pushed against the solid vampires, it wavered a moment then seemed to push around them, like the surface of a bubble that pushes past an object without popping. A moment later, the mists were shoved against the edges of the stone shield, leaving five suddenly unprotected vampire Hogs out in the open. They had been in the middle of preparing some kind of rocket or missile launcher.
"Get 'em," was all Ex had to say. Though Mind's Eye had to concentrate on sequestering the fog at the moment, there really wasn't much that five unprepared beings, even vampires, could do under the sudden coordinated tide of the team. I even got to get in one last staking personally. The rubber bullet thing was not sitting well with me, nor the fact they wanted me specifically alive.
The fogged ones didn't fare any better. When our attack began, they shifted back to solid to try to help, which only led them to being locked down in the tighter, stronger grip of Mind's fully focused mental grasp. They were the last four to get staked.
"Everyone okay?" Ex asked as we stood over the carnage. The stink of decay mixed with raw fresh blood was stomach-turning for all of us, I was sure. "Indy?" I wavered between anger at the obvious concern for fragile non-powered Irene's safety and disgust at myself for feeling any anger at all. I nodded, trying to most convincingly look like I wasn't having any trouble whatsoever, despite the pain I was suppressing in my side.
"We're all the worsse for wear, Ex," Medusa replied, inspecting the bleeding punctures in her forearm, "but I don't think any of usss are too badly hurt." The Human Tank flashed a look at me and I just nodded again. We weren't finished here and I wasn't going to let anyone fuss over me with work yet to do.
"If the bad guys are down, can you bring down the wall?," Rachel relayed over the com. "We have PART and EMTs in route and they can't do their jobs with the current state of affairs."
"Roger that," Ex answered. "Hex and Tank, give me a hand with the wall. Eye, get any survivors together and render aid. Everybody else, let's try t
o get some answers." There was a general assent and we split into our separate teams to get to work.
"Indomitable, from what angle did those vile creatures assault you from?" Archer asked as he, Medusa, and I stepped back through the ruined storefront. Glass crunched under my boot as the smell of decay and spilled liquor mixed in the air. Mind's Eye had already telepathically calmed and ordered the survivors outside as we had checked through the corpses there. The collection of identification and small-arms provided little information that we didn't already know or suspect: they were all Hogs and they were all ex-military.
"They came up from the basement," I said. There was definitely a bit of a tightness to my breath; my expert opinion was a cracked rib, at the absolute least very bad bruising. Rubber bullets are intended to be non-lethal like Tasers, but both can seriously injure or kill someone with some bad luck. What the hell did the Hogs want me for anyway?
"Got it," Meds said, giving me a concerned glance. "What about the upssstairsss? Eye sssayss there'ss one lasst human mind up there alive."
"Forsooth?" Archer beat me to the question, though I wouldn't have phrased it as such. "How could a mere mortal mind resist such awesome mental might?" I really wouldn't have phrased it that way. Also, it seemed that I wasn't the only one not connected to the Psychic Friends Network. At least in my case it was a technical issue, not purposeful exclusion.
"It's been done before," I said crossly as I walked towards the stairs. "We better get whoever it is out. No telling what traps or fail-safes the Hogs put downstairs." Hogs loved bombs, just like any terrorist, domestic or foreign. Maximum carnage and maximum terror.
"Ssmart thinking," Medusa acknowledged, following me upstairs, with Archer on our heels.
At the top of the stairs, it became obvious as to why the vampires didn't make their escape attempt up through the roof. There were three mismatched crosses nailed to the door, as well as a string of whole garlic cloves tied from one stair railing to the other. Garlic, I had forgotten about that, assuming it actually worked. Considering it was entirely unmolested, I could only guess that it did.
