The II AM Trilogy Collection

by Christopher Buecheler

  “We’re open to suggestions,” Lewis told her.

  “Can we climb down to the elevators and force them open?” Two asked, and Tori shook her head.

  “They’re locked down with multiple steel rods. There’s no way to open them, even for people as strong as us. Anyway, even if we get them open, we still have to deal with the soldiers on the first floor who are shooting at us.”

  “We need something that can remove the doors and the soldiers,” Sasha said. “The obvious solution is an explosion.”

  “Did we bring anything explosive?” Theroen asked.

  “A few grenades,” Lewis told him. “The council didn’t really stock up on that stuff. We have a lot of guns and swords, not much of anything else.”

  Two turned to Tori and asked, “What about the Children? They definitely know how to blow things up.”

  “We have C-4 and detonators, yes,” Tori said. “But our munitions bay is down on the third sublevel. That’s where it’s all stored.”

  “Well, they don’t know that you’re working against them yet, right? Couldn’t you go down and get some?”

  Tori frowned. “First, they’ve probably found the bodies in cellblock and worked out what happened. Second, if they haven’t, they’ll want me to assume command of a squad. Third, even if I made it down there, what am I supposed to say when I’m coming back with the C-4? That I’m just taking an evening stroll through the vampire-infested section of our headquarters?”

  “Yeah, I guess that won’t work,” Two said.

  “No. We need something up here. Gasoline and oil won’t work. It has to be military-grade explosives. I … wait … oh, shit, of course!”

  The others were all looking at Tori now, waiting for her to continue. She grinned and said, “All of our transports can self-destruct if necessary. Even the cars. If we harvest the C-4 and detonators from them, it should be enough to blow all three elevator doors open.”

  “I would have thought such systems would be wired to explode if tampered with,” Sasha said.

  “Well, of course they are,” Tori replied. “But most officers at my level know the code to disarm them. There’s about a dozen vehicles. Grab some people and follow me.”

  Tori turned without waiting to see if they would obey and began making her way back toward the garage. Two glanced at Theroen, who shrugged, and started down the hallway as well. Two followed him, and Lewis came behind, motioning for several nearby vampires, Burilgi men and women that she did not know, to accompany them.

  There were six cars, four SUVs, two pickup trucks, and an APC to harvest from, but Tori explained that the work would be relatively quick. Each vehicle contained three clumps of explosives, strategically placed to do the most damage. Each steel box containing the C-4 was bolted together, but there was no shortage of tools in the warehouse.

  “Let’s disarm them all first. Just open each one and hit 6994931 on the keypad under the steering well. If the light goes green, you’re clear. If it goes red … well, if it goes red then they’ve changed the code and you should run like hell.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting,” Two muttered, but she made her way over to one of the cars and pulled on the door handle. She could see Tori heading for the APC, and Theroen moving toward one of the pickup trucks.

  Two slid into the driver’s seat and leaned down. Just as Tori had said, there was a small black keypad installed below the steering column. Two took a breath, held it, and typed in the code. After a moment, the light blinked green and held steady. Two let out her breath in a small sigh of relief.

  The group rapidly made their way through the thirteen vehicles, disarming the systems. Tori then removed one of the boxes and instructed them on how to open it and extract the putty-like C-4 and its detonator.

  “Try to get as much of the trailing wire as you can,” Tori said. “I’m going to need it.”

  They went to work. In less than ten minutes, they had stripped the vehicles and formed an impressive pile of the explosive compound. Two thought they had perhaps thirty-five feet of wire, which didn’t seem like nearly enough to reach a safe distance. She expressed her doubts to Tori, who said simply, “Already thought of that,” as she headed for the hallway.

  “Pull as many as you can back to the far end of the warehouse,” she said to Sasha as she went by. “Leave enough in the stairwell to hold it, but let them know that when they hear me shout the order to move, they need to get their asses out of there and all the way back to the warehouse as fast as they can. In ten minutes, no one’s going to want to be anywhere near this bank of elevators.”

  Without further discussion, still holding the large collection of explosive material, she leapt down into the first elevator shaft. Two heard the noise of her landing on the roof of the elevator car.

  “Your friend is used to having people obey her orders without question,” Sasha said.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Two said.

  “I will add it to the list of grievances,” Sasha said. “For the moment, I believe we should get these people out of here. That was a great deal of C-4.”

  They went to work, asking the assembled vampires to move back into the warehouse. As they were finishing, Tori returned from the third elevator shaft, carrying with her the tips of the wires attached to the detonators down below. She laid them on the floor next to the wires from the other shafts and began twisting them together. Two moved over next to her.

  “OK,” she said. “Everyone’s back. I get how this is supposed to work … except for the part where you have to stand right here next to three open elevator shafts to set the things off.”

  “I was planning on closing the doors,” Tori said, still working on the wires.

  “Come on …”

  “Right, no, I’m not that strong. If you want to do me a favor, go through those doors into the office wing. There’s a hundred-foot extension cord running from the outer edge of the west wall all the way to the projector in the conference room at the far end. Total fire hazard, but the idiots couldn’t be bothered to wire the room. You’ll see it.”

  “How do you remember this shit?” Two asked, and Tori glanced over her shoulder, a grim smile on her face.

  “The Emperor trained me very well,” she said, and then went back to knotting the wires.

  As Two was heading for the cubicle farm, Theroen caught up with her. She explained the situation to him as he followed her into the open room.

  “There it is, just like she said.” Two moved over and unplugged the cord from the wall, looping it over her shoulder and moving toward the conference room.

  “Her mind is quite something,” Theroen said. “I do wonder what techniques they used to train her.”

  “Whatever they were, I’m sure they were awful,” Two replied. She reached the glass room and pulled the projector from the extension cord. She tried to imagine the Children soldiers she had encountered sitting around watching a PowerPoint presentation and found the image utterly baffling.

  “Obviously drugs were involved,” Theroen said. “Most likely psychological manipulation as well.”

  “It’s starting to wear off, though,” Two said. “The old Tori’s coming back. Can you tell?”

  “I never knew the old Tori,” Theroen said. “She does seem to be more at ease with you, though, than she was when this started.”

  Two smiled. “I knew she was in there somewhere. I knew it!”

  “At the next council meeting, feel free to engage in a well-earned ‘I told you so,’ but for now, we should stick to the task at hand.”

  Two nodded. “Let’s go blow some shit up.”

  When they reached Tori, she had finished tying the wires together and was standing above them, looking impatient. Two handed her the extension cord, and without a word, Tori pulled one of her blades from its sheath at her side and cut the female end off. She quickly separated the wires and attached them to those that led down into the elevators.

  “So, when you plug that in …”
Two began.

  “There’s going to be a shitload of sparks and a huge fucking explosion,” Tori finished for her. “Right. I used less C-4 in the elevator on the left. With any luck, we won’t collapse the stairwell.”

  “That’d be a plus,” Two said.

  “Is everyone back?”

  “Everyone except the people holding the stairs.”

  “Perfect. You guys go, too. Far wall, and you might want to get behind something. I’m not kidding.”

  “What about you?” Theroen asked. “That cord will not reach the far wall.”

  “I’ll manage,” Tori said. “I’m not going to blow myself up unless I know it’s going to take out the Emperor at the same time. Don’t worry about it.”

  “If I wasn’t worried about you, you’d still be playing for the other team,” Two said.

  “Yeah, and if you had worried enough to not leave me in Ohio in the first place, I’d never have gotten wrapped up in this shit. You want to get back into this?”

  Two sighed. “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Good. So go. I’m going to call up the rest of the troops.”

  Two opened her mouth to say something else, realized it wasn’t worth it, and stopped. She took Theroen’s hand and the two of them turned and ran down the hallway. She could hear Tori yelling out – in the vampire language, no less – to the few vampires who remained in the stairwell. After a moment more, new footsteps sounded out in the hall as they began to evacuate.

  By the time Two and Theroen had reached the far end of the warehouse, the other vampires were charging into the room as well, moving at a full run. Two turned in time to see Tori coming through the door, holding the extension cord in her hand. She button-hooked around to the left, and stood for a moment by the power outlet she intended to use. She glanced over at Two and held her eyes for a moment. Two nodded.

  Tori smiled, turned, and jammed the plug into the socket. There was the slightest pause, just a fraction of a second, and then the explosions came, three distinct blasts that shook the entire building. The broken door between the warehouse and the hallway was blown off its remaining hinge by a huge plume of flame; it flew the length of the room, nearly crushing a few Burilgi who happened to be standing in its path. The jet of flame reached halfway across the space, and the assembled vampires were pummeled by a heavy, hot shockwave full of shrapnel and debris. For a moment Two wondered if they were going to be incinerated, but the heat began to dissipate, the flames dying down and receding into the hall.

  Two found herself looking for Tori, but the entire front of the room was filled with black smoke, and it was impossible to see whether the other woman had survived. Then a silhouette appeared, and in another moment Tori burst out from the smoke, coughing and stumbling toward them.

  “Fire extinguishers!” she gasped, and pointed toward a yellow metal cabinet near one of the garage doors. “Get fire extinguishers! The hallway’s burning up!”

  Chapter 25

  Aftermath

  Vanessa’s ears were ringing, and for what seemed a lengthy period of time, she was unable to do anything more than ponder just how inaccurate that turn of phrase was. The noise wasn’t anything like a ringing. It was a piercing, high-pitched shriek that seemed to drive through her skull and into her brain. The noise made it hard to think, and so she tried instead to focus on the other sensations her body was providing.

  Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t feel quite ready to open them, but she could tell that she was lying face down on a hard surface. There was grit pressing against her cheek and her lungs were burning again, like they had in the days immediately following the attack on the cathedral.

  As an experiment, she tried wiggling her toes. Those still worked, so she moved on to her fingers and felt them move as well. That pleased her; non-functioning digits were never a great sign. Now if she could only get the not-ringing-but-shrieking in her ears to stop.

  She felt someone touch her back, and then words were making their way through the shrieking noise, muffled and indistinct, like a conversation half heard through thick glass. After a few moments more, the sounds began to come together.

  “Captain, wake up!”

  I’m not the Captain, Vanessa thought. You want the indestructible chick with the bad attitude.

  Then she remembered that she was a captain now. She had been made one just before Charles had died. When had that been? She could remember the funeral service, but not whether it had been weeks ago, or months. Everything seemed very confused.

  The voice spoke again, still urgent, and this time the words seemed to be coming from someplace much closer. “OK, Captain. I guess I’m dragging you.”

  She felt someone rolling her over from belly to back and then felt hands under her armpits. The grit on the floor that had been pressing into her face now began to slip down the back of her pants, the sensation far from comfortable. It was this, as much as anything else, that finally forced Vanessa to open her eyes. They took a moment to focus, but then she saw that she was being hauled backward by a young man – he looked familiar – whose hair was twisted into wild, disheveled tangles. His face was covered in scorch marks.

  “Don’t I know you?” she asked, or thought she asked, but the words must not have come out right because when the man looked down at her, it was with an expression of pure confusion.

  “What, Captain?”

  “I know you,” Vanessa tried again, this time a statement, because now she was sure. The pieces of her mind seemed to be slipping back into place in great chunks, now, and in a moment more she was able to summon his name up from the black depths of her memory.

  “Jackson,” she said, and then, “Private, what the hell is going on? What are you doing?”

  “I’m dragging you down the fucking hall to keep you from being swarmed by fucking vampires,” Jackson growled between gasps of exertion. “Ma’am.”

  “What are you talking …” she began, and then she remembered all of it, the images coming to her so suddenly that they seemed almost to replace her vision. The barricades, yes; she had been preparing to toss the grenade and then lead the rush into the smoke when all of a sudden a tremendous ball of fire had come rolling toward them.

  “Private, let me go. Let me go right now!”

  Vanessa could feel her strength returning, and with it her sense of self. The otherworldly confusion was dissipating, taking with it the shrieking sound in her ears, and she was tired of feeling chunks of concrete trying to shove their way down the crack of her ass.

  “They’re going to be here any minute!” Jackson said.

  “Yes, and we’ll move a lot faster if we’re both on our fucking feet, so let me go. That’s an order, Private!”

  “All right. Yes, ma’am,” Jackson said, and he took his hands away from her armpits. Vanessa raised her right arm and Jackson took her hand, hauling her to her feet. Once there, she swayed and fell sideways into him.

  Jackson caught her as best he could, and Vanessa could feel his hand cupping her right breast. For a moment, she had an absurd flashback to the time in her fifteenth year when she and a fellow cadet had spent perhaps twenty furious, sweaty minutes together in a broom closet before being discovered by a Sergeant who’d made them run laps for the next three hours. She regained her balance laughing.

  “Not the best time to cop a feel, Private,” she said.

  “That is the single last thing on my mind right now,” Jackson told her, removing his hand.

  Vanessa nodded. “How long was I out?”

  “Not long,” Jackson said. “A big chunk of something must’ve hit you in the back of the head, because your whole neck and back are covered in blood. I crawled over to you once it seemed like the flames had died down.”

  “Where are the bats?”

  “Coming. Some guys from the Medic’s room can still fight. They pushed forward and engaged, but the barricade’s blown to shit and now all three elevators are open again. Bats are just pouring out of them.
Our guys won’t hold the line long, and I had to get you out of there.”

  Vanessa ran her hands over her face, trying to collect her thoughts. “Shit, I lost the grenade. I … what happened to the others?”

  “Most of them are dead,” Jackson said, his expression grim. “A couple more might just be unconscious. Anyone who was still awake is fighting.”

  “Did you see Carrie?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t even know who that is.”

  “God damn it.” Vanessa looked back toward the elevators, but the smoke was now much worse than before. She couldn’t see anything.

  “Jackson, this is bad. We can’t hold this level, now, and they won’t be able to hold the staircase either. The bats are going to hit level two. I have to get down to the Emperor’s quarters.”

  “What about the others?” Jackson asked.

  “They’ll either fall back or get overrun. Trust me, they’ll figure that out on their own.”

  “Captain, I don’t … what do I do?”

  “Get to the Command Center before the bats do. We’ll be regrouping there and will need all hands to hold the fort. My job … listen I don’t have time to tell you why, but I have to get to the Emperor. I don’t have a choice.”

  Vanessa heard someone scream not far away, the kind of sound that she knew meant another body had been added to the count. She hoped it was a vampire, feared it was one of her soldiers, and understood that she would never know the truth. She could hear running footsteps moving toward them. If they belonged to the enemy, Vanessa didn’t want to be caught out in the open. She clapped Jackson on the shoulder and said, “Time to fall back. Let’s go, Private.”

  * * *

  She parted ways with Jackson at the entrance to the Emperor’s quarters, a single, unassuming steel door that opened into a hallway unlike any other in their headquarters. Lined with exquisitely-worked teak and mahogany panels – themselves carved and split into intricate designs that reflected the Children’s Incan origins – it also boasted a stunning amount of inlay work, crafted from gold and turquoise and mother of pearl. Vanessa had no idea who had built the hallway – it was surely not anyone who still lived in the base – but it must have been a craftsman or craftsmen of substantial skill. She couldn’t imagine how long the project had taken, and found herself wondering what the Emperor’s chambers themselves might look like.