The Push Chronicles (Book 2): Indefatigable

by J. B. Garner

  I carefully let myself down into the plush chair, covering my nose from the cloud of dust that puffed into the air. Nothing yet. Glancing around the desk, trying to imagine I was Ian Mackenzie, hot on the trail of Eric's secrets, I could see nothing out of place except that one photo. My eyes drawn to it, I leaned forward and tried to pick it up for a closer look. It didn't budge, but did seem to want to twist on it's base. Huh. The desk also refused to move as I gave it a small experimental push.

  This time, instead of pulling on the photo frame, I twisted it, turning it until it sat facing me in the chair. There was an audible click, then the whir of some kind of mechanism. The desk slid forward along the tracks in the dust, a concealed trapdoor in the floor opened wide, and the chair sprang forward, ejecting me unceremoniously out of it and down the trap door.

  I cursed under my breath as I slid down the metal tube. I only hoped this was here because of Eric's love of water slides and not because it was feeding into, say, a lit furnace. All I could do is force myself to calm down and enjoy the ride. To my relief, I did not land in a burning pit or a car crusher.

  Instead, I landed on a soft layer of padding in a small chamber. Probably some forgotten sub-basement, there was nothing in the room but the end of the slide, some track lighting that provided dim visibility, and an open archway. I could only think that all of this construction came about after the Whiteout. With his nigh-infinite powers, Epic could have easily created this little repository with no one noticing. Seeing no options save one, I carefully crept to the arch.

  What lay beyond seemed like a simple hallway. The light here was even dimmer, coming from two thin strip lights along each wall. It was looking at those lights that warned me that this was no normal hall. I could see places where the light was covered in what I guessed was soot. Straining my eyes, I could also make out other scorch marks in the walls in intermittent locations. Glancing at the ceiling, it told the same tale. This was another melodramatic 'hallway of doom' that seemed to be more and more common among Pushcrooks as the Whiteout wore on. The main difference here was that Eric was far too brilliant to leave an obvious trigger or light beam or tripwire. It didn't matter, though, I had to pass.

  I took a deep breath, focused, and began to sprint. With the speed of the automated flame jets, a small analytical part of my accelerated mind figured it had to be motion sensors as triggers. The rest of my mind was devoted to preventing myself from becoming a slab of barbeque. The problem was, as I ducked and tumbled under the first gout of flame, that I didn't know if this was Pushtech or just elaborate conventional technology. The former I could worry a lot less about; the latter would be almost certainly lethal. A triple pulse of flames, one high, one low, and one blasting upwards, forced me to dive towards the right side of the hallway, leaving me a little singed but unharmed. It all was going swimmingly until the second half of the hallway, when some kind of random sequence began. The hallway filled up with random spurts of flame from all directions. I still had no choice. Kicking off from my last leap, I could do no more than rely on my accelerated reflexes, senses, and dumb luck.

  I crouched low and tried to still my breathing. I had made it through the chaotic firestorm with my life intact but the intense heat had put my communicator on the fritz again. I could only hope that the roar of the flames in the corridor hadn't alerted whoever it was that was working in the next room. I could just barely hear the sounds of a welding torch through the door in front of me. I didn't know if it was Mackenzie, but there was no Pulse in the air, so who else could it have been? Once my breathing settled and the last wisps of smoke drifted off of me, I applied my shoulder forcefully to the door, bursting into the room beyond.

  Ian Mackenzie was just putting down the small welding torch as wooden splinters heralded my arrival. He was working on some kind of equipment using the tools and parts that were neatly organized in this secret laboratory. Much of it I could recognize by sight if not knowledge from the night of the Whiteout. I could also recognize the four human goons laden with assault rifles that were waiting in the room with him. Fortunately for me, their guard was apparently down; they were in mid-chat and had been paying little attention to the door.

  This wasn't the time to play nice or fair. I was across the room before they could even open their mouths. Grabbing the nearest goon's slung rifle, I pulled back and up on the sling, throwing him clear across the room. Again, I marveled at how good I felt. The wholeness I hadn't felt for months was back and even that micro-second of contemplation gave the remaining soldiers no edge. They were moving in molasses and I was greased with quicksilver.

  One of the thugs must have fancied himself a gunslinger as his hands moved towards the two revolvers at his hips. I lunged and drew his pistols for him, twirling them on a finger to grab them barrel-first before pistol-whipping his cowboy hat in. The last two Hogs had wisely kept their sub-machine guns close at hand. On each side of me, they brought up their automatic murder-machines to tear me in half. I simply dropped down, letting my body go limp, as both gunmen pulled down on their triggers. Not my ideal solution, but I didn't have a choice. Both Hogs danced from the other's bullets and collapsed in bloody heaps.

  Rearing back my legs, I kip-upped to my feet. I hadn't fired a gun since I was a kid, but I felt I might need to do so as I whirled to face Mackenzie, spinning both revolvers in my hand back to their proper shooting position. He had apparently spent these last moments sliding the bundle of equipment on his back, a crown of electrodes on his head.

  "Now, Irene," Ian said in soothing tones, "you're not a murderer. You're not a killer in any sense, the last few moments aside." He glanced at his bleeding minions. "Besides, don't you get it? This is the mother lode. We can fix this all right now, if you'll let me." I could hear an all-too familiar beep of my biofeedback device from the bundle on his back.

  "Quit the lies," I ordered, training the pistols at his heart. "There's no way you could power a Whiteout with that equipment."

  "Well, no, I admit you are correct." He shrugged. "But I can do this." There was a split-second flash of white light and, instead of two pistols, I was suddenly holding two roses. "Irene, I didn't know you cared." I snarled and threw down the flowers. Ian had rigged a portable unit, something with just enough power to change reality on a small scale. He was just finishing his snark as I rushed him.

  What Ian had told me before was accurate. Every Natural was different. He really was smarter than I was. What he had just accomplished was true brilliance, even if it was based on previous work. Also, I was so much faster than he was. He could only begin to flinch as I threw a hard right across his chin. The bastard still had the presence of mind to roll with the impact, sending him across the table but preserving his consciousness. I vaulted the table in one easy bound to find the air between the two of us occupied by a brick wall.

  The impact was rough, but not too jarring. I still bounced back onto the table itself. Gripping the edges of the table for leverage, my legs pulled back to my chest then lashed out, knocking a neat hole through the brick and mortar. The wall tumbled down, hopefully on top of Ian's pointy head.

  "As much as I want to replay this match, I'm in no shape to do so." He was on the other side of the room now. How? He shouldn't be able to be affected by the reality-alteration himself ... should he? "Or, to be more accurate, you're in far too good a shape for it." He wiped blood from his mouth as I rolled off the worktable and onto my feet.

  "You could give up, turn yourself in," I offered. "You could probably knock a life sentence or two off by working with me to try to fix all of this. The right way."

  "Come on," he scoffed. "You may be the athlete of our little circle, but I'm the tactical genius. Don't you think I planned for this eventuality? Though, admittedly, we need to change the venue." I rushed him while he was in mid-sentence, but now he was ready. His physical reflexes weren't on my level now, but his mental agility was supreme. A tremendous hurricane-force wind buffeted me in the chest and, to my sur
prise, was quite real. I tumbled backwards and crashed into that same cursed worktable, sending a rain of hand tools down on my head.

  "Think," Ian said, "this isn't Pushtech. This is the tech that made the Push." He smiled proudly. "You, me, we're not immune to this. And neither is Epic." He raised his arms over his head, victory dancing in his eyes. I pushed myself back to my feet. Maybe I could catch him off-guard before he could use the device again. "This, however, isn't the place to end our little game, Dr. Roman." He snapped his fingers just as I began to make another move. I froze as my eyes filled up with white light.

  As my vision cleared, I was treated to the sight of my home, the city I had been protecting for three months now no matter the personal costs, being torn apart. We stood on the front steps of the State Capitol building. Hasty barricades set up by the Atlanta Police and PART were in various states of disarray. Vampires swarmed over the grounds as I could hear battle raging inside of the building itself. The groans of the dead and dying mingled with the bursts of gunfire and the whine of superhuman energies unleashed.

  "Welcome to the new Atlanta," Ian said, his enthusiasm dampened somewhat by the bloodshed. "It's a work-in-progress but I hope you will get used to it."

  I didn't favor him with a reply as I charged him. Was it suicidal? Perhaps. But there was nothing else I desired more than to wipe the remains of that smile off of his face.

  What stopped me wasn't a reality-altering thought from Mackenzie. It was the woman that conjured herself from out of the swirling fog of war all around us. The monster that I drove my hand into wasn't a woman of course. She was no longer even a corpse. Before me was an ancient pile of ash and dust, congealed by some unreal power into an animate form. There was no Pulse coming from this vampire but there was some darker, primal drum that shuddered through my soul.

  There was a good reason for that. The woman standing there, looking cross, as if this was an interruption of her otherwise important duties, was not just vaguely familiar. She was instantly recognizable.

  "Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed, I presume?" I asked, trying to process both the reality of what I was seeing and the fear beating in my heart that even I couldn't ignore.

  "I told you, Doctor, there have been many Whiteouts in the past." There was a mild amusement in Mackenzie's voice. Bathory, for her part, didn't even deign to answer my question as she moved to grab my throat with inhuman speed.

  Chapter 18 Midnight

  The stake was swatted out of my hand like it was candy from a misbehaving child. The backhand immediately after, delivered with all the disdain a Sixteenth Century noblewoman would have for a local peasant, sent me hurtling backwards until I came to rest in a torn-up line of greenery on the Capitol lawn.

  "What disgusts me more than the transformation that centuries of lies and slander have caused in me is the lack of respect the men and women of this horrid age pay to their betters," Countess Bathory lectured in accented English. "Imagine my surprise when one of you has the respect and decency to present an option that did not involve stakes, crosses, or accusing priests."

  This thing gliding in elegant steps towards me was so unreal, so inhuman, I thought my eyes would burst just trying to force the two images to coexist. One of the Hungarian noblewoman, as if she had stepped out of a portrait, dressed in modern elegance, the other of the pulsing, flowing pile of ashes and decayed dust. History says that Bathory had been cremated before her second burial. Had Mackenzie been so sick as to dig up those ashes to let the Whiteout create this monstrosity? No, this thing had already been stirring to some degree before Ian had come into play. Like he said, Bathory was from a different time, but revived all the same by the Whiteout.

  "You can't believe him, Countess," I said, pushing myself to my feet before she just ripped my head off. Whatever power caused her to move, it was just enough different from the Pulse that my natural defenses were much less effective. This was one Pushed I just couldn't fight, not alone.

  "Why can I not?" she quirked an eyebrow. "I have all the advantages. If he dares move against me or my brood, I will simply snuff him out like a candle." She tried to gaze into my eyes, but I instinctively looked away. "Sir Mackenzie requires an army to fight his age's brand of hero, so be it. It is not like I have not danced this waltz before." She blurred forward again, but this time I was prepared. I knew I couldn't find purchase in a body made of ash, but I could also use that to my advantage as I dove not away, but through the cloud of grave rot. To her surprise and a little of my own, I burst out of her back, rolling to my feet as soon as I hit the ground. Where the hell did Mackenzie go? The thing was he could be anywhere. This was spiraling out of hand fast, especially as a good number of the vampire Hogs began to gather into a mob in the streets below us.

  "Things have changed since you two made your agreement." The fact that she was now patiently listening to me made me even more uneasy. I licked my dry lips and tried to keep talking. "Mackenzie used all of this to get a hold of something more powerful than you to do his work for him. He doesn't need you now." She nodded thoughtfully, holding her hands behind her back, as she slowly stalked in my direction.

  "Intriguing, but really, my dear, any desperate ploy on his part is sheer folly," the Countess smiled, showing her fangs. "If you haven't felt it in the marrow of your bones yet, let me assure you that I am unlike anything your low-minded future can comprehend. I was forged from the beliefs and nightmares of an age of true faith and every time I have awoken since, I have only grown stronger." There was a short laugh of derision. "If you represent the best hopes and dreams of this modern age, certainly the men and women have lost their capacity to imagine. You might, however, be worthwhile to keep alive for some time to hang on my -"

  It was that creeping black terror that threw off the aim of my first stake, but damn if I didn't throw it in spite of that. The shaft sunk into her undead flesh and tickled the ashes underneath. She let out a cry of surprise and pain as she gripped the stake in her left shoulder and ripped it free; Bathory so believed in the terror she invoked that she didn't think it capable for anyone to attack her. I suppose that's why the second stake really surprised her. Still, after my first attack, Elizabeth's instincts were alert enough to throw her forearm in the way. If I was going to get killed by a relic of mankind's dark past, it was going to be standing on my two feet, not broken on some monster's torture rack.

  "Very well, peasant," Bathory snarled, pulling the stake out of her arm. "I will leave you to be scraps for my dogs." She snapped a finger and the pack of vampires idling at the base of the steps charged.

  A wall of solid ice sprung up in their path, curved slightly to keep them corralled, followed by a chorus of inhuman shrieks as the wooden points of crossbow bolts pierced the ice. Where the street lights had shone bluish through the clear ice, it quickly turned an opaque blood red beneath the arrow impacts.

  "And the sad thing is that still puts you one up in the save column on me, Indy," Extinguisher called out as he streaked over our heads on his ice slide. To say that my ex-boyfriend was pristine would be a lie, his coat was ragged with tears and holes and the blood on his uniform wasn't entirely the vampires'. Still, to see him up and fighting gave me a spark of hope to hold on to.

  "Perhaps this dost count as a half-point for both of us, fine Extinguisher." The Argent Archer hopped the ice wall with a burst of his jet pack, leveling his crossbow at the Countess. "Please, with all due respect, Your Ladyship, I would request you stand down or I shall be forced to fire." Bathory arched an eyebrow at the two Push Heroes and smiled slowly.

  "Ah, so these are the heroes of your age, woman." She nodded. "You are but a normal girl playing at being more than you are. That explains much." Ignoring me entirely, the Countess turned to Archer. "Unfortunately, good sir knight, I would request that instead you stand down. I could use many a noble warrior in my court and would not wish to slay you where you stand." She cast a glance at Extinguisher as he spiraled down for another pass. "The same offer
stands for your occult friend as well."

  "I say thee 'nay', Your Ladyship." The bowman's bow fired with a loud twang as Ex slid down to unleash a spray of frost to hold her in place. I, too, sprang into action. I certainly wasn't going to let some reawakened corpse from hundreds of years ago ignore me. Even my accelerated mind could barely keep up with the sudden burst of motion the Countess put on. Archer's bow shot was nowhere near close, while Extinguisher's blast of frost was even further off target. My fingers barely touched the edge of her ashen form.

  Before I could turn on my heels to follow her movement, I could hear the crunch of metal as the vampiric noblewoman held Archer aloft, her white claw of a hand slowly crushing into his neck guard. I began to run as Ex swept past me on his ice trail; I said nothing as I jumped on behind him, grabbing hold as he accelerated. Another second or so and Bathory would pop off Archer's head like a cork, no matter how much he struggled and kicked with his powered armor's strength. I wasn't sure we would be there in time to save him.

  Fortunately, we weren't alone in that effort. I don't know how she silently slithered close to the action, but right when the brave bowman's fate seemed sealed, Medusa sprang up behind Bathory and grappled with her, her snakes plunging their fangs into her dead flesh in a dozen locations.

  "Let him go and let'sss talk," she hissed, a depth of rage I had never heard from the snake-woman dripping from her words. "One mythological monssster to another, sssi?" The ancient vampire let out a slight gasp as Medusa's venom fought with infernal regeneration, each bite wound starting to turn to stone. Bathory dropped Archer to the ground and twisted to try and pry Medusa off of her. The two struggled and finally locked eyes. As we swept past the two, I leaned down and grabbed the ailing Archer, pulling him free of the battle of unnatural forces.