by Phil Maxey
“Look, fellas, we got one of those freak vamps,” said one of the smaller individuals. A few strands of red hair lay smeared across his scalp which glistened with sweat.
Marina walked forward. “What’s going on here?”
“You ain’t the police, lady,” said another larger man, his shirt a few sizes too small for a gut which threatened to pop the lowermost buttons.
She walked even closer to them. Now more were looking at her. She tried looking into the cell, but those at the door blocked any view inside. “If you want something, maybe I can find it for you. What’s in that cell?”
“It’s not a what, it’s a who!” shouted one of the younger in the crowd.
The balding man walked forward standing a few feet from her. Marina noticed in his hand was a wooden molded pole of some kind. Maybe a chair leg. “You heard about Bee Abbott?” he said.
Marina nodded.
“She was working for those who want in here. Those who want to kill us and our families! The guy in there, he worked for Bee. We just want to have a friendly chat with him!”
“He knows something!” came from someone in the crowd.
Those at the front pushed their way inside the small room, a woman screamed as did a child, while a man pleaded to be left alone. But the crowd had become a mob, and the man was dragged out and thrown to the ground.
Marina went to run to his aid when two men, at least a foot taller than her, blocked her path.
The red-haired man flung his fist at the man on the floor. A crack was followed by a spray of blood.
Without thinking, Marina grabbed hold of the first man then flung him behind her. The other lunged at her, but she was too quick, and ducked beneath his outstretched fingers. When he was leaned forward, she pivoted, pushing into his back, and sending him careering across the smooth floor.
The redheaded man pulled his hand back to thrust it forward once again when his armed stopped moving. At first, he couldn’t understand why, and by the time his brain realized Marina was holding it, she had already pushed him back. He fell against some of the other men who quickly helped him back up.
She turned and went to help the man on the floor when an object connected with her back. This wasn’t a chair leg, but something heavier, a metal pole maybe?
She heard something crumple in her torso, but spun around, her hands now claws, and her eyes black. She grabbed the man who was about to launch another attack and hoisted him high into the air above her. At the back of her mind she heard shouts of ‘Get her!’ and heard the thundering steps cascading towards her, but she just wanted to enjoy the blood of the man whose life was slowly ebbing away between her fingers.
A gunshot echoed around the walls and bars, and everyone froze.
Holland lowered his gun to his side. Standing next to him was one of his people and a young guy.
The former camp boss walked forward to the man with a lack of hair. The man went to talk, but before the second word left his mouth, Holland slapped him across his lips instantly cutting them. The man held his mouth in shock then stepped backwards.
“Some of you might know that I used to live in these very hallowed halls.” He pointed up to the back corner of the second floor. “Just up there. I used to pace up and down that balcony, watching the others do their deals. All under my say, of course. And you know what? Those rapists, murderers, and pieces of shit controlled themselves better than all you idiots.”
He walked past the man with the busted lip and stood near the one who was still on the floor. He looked down. Marina, now with human eyes and appendages, readied herself. “This man that you all think is a spy don’t know shit. Bee was working alone. And you know how I know that?” He continued as some asked under their breaths how he did. “Because—” he pointed to Amos. “That boy can read minds. He probably knows which hands you all use to jerk off with each morning just by looking at you.”
Marina stifled her smile.
Holland looked back at his guard. “Get this guy cleaned up in the medical place.” He looked at the crowd. “The rest of you, stop wasting my time and get back to your damn cells!”
Everyone started filtering away.
Marina leaned over, slightly grimacing.
Holland looked at her. “Maybe you might want to go too.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. I heal quick.”
Holland smiled, walked a few feet then stopped and looked back. “You ever need any work. Come talk to me.” He turned and walked to the door, taking Amos with him.
*****
Will this rain ever stop.
Joel wiped the drops from the binocular lenses. He looked through them again resting his elbow on a trunk of a tree.
The others were crouched behind various other trees to his left and right.
Carla was right next to him. “What can you see?” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the incessant howling.
There were no external lights, but the interior lights seeped through the gaps in the doors and from the skylights on the roof. Within the glows shadows moved.
“Not much. Need to get closer.”
Carla looked at the others nearby. “We’ll split into three teams. Keller, Bishop, go into the parking lot, see if you can hot-wire any of the Humvees, and disable the others.” She looked to Holland’s men. “You two, you think you can disable the two choppers?” They nodded. “Me and Joel will try and see what’s in the buildings.”
Each person nodded. Keller and Bishop waited for a gust of wind to cover any noise and ran forward, down the bank, and onto the concrete. Reaper and Caz followed quickly behind, moving along the bank then across the lot to the first aircraft.
Carla went to set off when Joel grabbed her arm. “I want to see if there are any excavations, any tunnels.”
She nodded, and they moved down the slope and over the sodden mud and grass, trying to keep their balance as the storm did its best to bowl them over.
Joel slid and kept going, finally stopping when he hit the concrete. He crouched catlike, making sure his fall didn’t alert anyone. His ears picked up multiple voices inside the closest building. He swung around, scouring the darkness for any signs of holes in the ground. He immediately spotted a gaping mass of black, tens of yards away, halfway up the bank.
He pointed to it and Carla nodded. She pointed to the closest building and they parted ways, him climbing back up while she ran across the concrete, avoiding the puddles.
He looked into the circular break in the ground which was barely visible despite standing directly next to it. He judged it to be seven feet wide, big enough to drive a tank through. He crouched and let his fingers trace over the grooves in the slippery mud. The undulations told him what he already suspected. Vamps. Hundreds had passed through the entrance. He stood back up, trying to get his bearings, but he guessed the tunnel led directly to the water pipes, and then the prison’s basement.
Carla stayed close to the brickwork, heading for the glow that emanated from under one of the two doors she had spotted. When she arrived at her destination, she got on her stomach, her clothes immediately soaking up the pool of water there and laid with her cheek to the ground. It was just enough for her to see under the door, and to the brightness within.
A cavernous space was lit by a number of battery-powered lanterns. Inside, amongst a few floor to ceiling shelves full of sacks of some sort of grain, were camping beds with soldiers sleeping on them.
In the small sliver of light she was privy to, she counted around twenty people.
Maybe an advanced expeditionary force? Sent to support the vamps? They probably got Alkrons amongst them.
She quietly got back to her feet. A fizzing noise just made it to her over the sheets of rain. She looked behind her. Slight flashes of blue were lighting up the first choppers cockpit.
Good going, guys.
She went to turn back to the door when a shadow blocked the light from underneath it and the handle turned.
; Before she had a chance to react, a hand grabbed her around her mouth and pulled her tight against the wall. The door swung open and stopped inches from the front of her nose.
Joel let go of her mouth and they both stood frozen.
“Five hours, and it’s not let up yet!” came a voice just feet from them.
Carla looked towards the helicopter. The neon flashes from whatever ruin Reaper and Caz had caused had mercifully died down.
A puff of warm breath spread out into the night air and drifted upwards.
The man on the other side of the wooden partition took in a few lungfuls.
“Close the friggin door!” shouted someone from inside.
The man sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”
The door slammed close.
In the distance, two man-shaped shadows stood and ran from the first to the second chopper, immediately pulling the cockpit door open.
Carla indicated to Joel that they should move past the door.
He nodded and, being watchful of where their boots touched the drenched concrete, they crept past the entrance then broke out into a jog which became a run.
To their right, another burst of blue light heralded the second aircraft being rendered unflyable.
Carla and Joel stopped at the end of the first building, some thirty yards from the door.
Another building looked at them opposite. This one, however, was completely dark.
Joel leaned into her. “Any sign of Donnie?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t see much, but they got a whole lot of mercs in there.”
He nodded back to the bank. “There’s a tunnel over there, looks like vamps have gone into it.”
“How many?”
“Could be hundreds or more. It’s heading towards the prison.”
Reaper and Caz ran up to them.
“We’ve done what we can here. We need to find Keller and Bishop. See if they got a Humvee ready to start,” said Carla.
She went to move off towards the front of the building but noticed Joel hadn’t moved. He was standing looking upwards.
“Joel, we can’t afford for them to know we’re here!”
“You go, I’m not leaving the kid behind.” He looked along the side of the building. At the far corner was a drainage pipe that ran from the ground to the roof.
As the rain beat down upon them both, Carla stood, hesitating. “He might not even be here anymore!”
Joel smiled best he could despite the impacts of the drops on his face. “You have to go…”
Her frown became a nod and she turned and disappeared into the blankets of rain.
Joel ran to the pipe, got the best grip he could on the wet clamps that were holding it to the building, and pulled himself up. After six more heaves he was on the metal plated roof. Walking as quietly as he could, he moved forward, carefully up the slippery slope then stopped when he arrived at the first skylight.
He looked down twenty feet to the floor and rows of men and women sleeping, all of them decked out in black army fatigues, their weapons just by the side of their low beds.
No sign of Donnie.
An engine roar filled the air, even louder than the rain. Joel watched a few of the soldiers sit up, not knowing where the noise came from. Then more joined them.
The Humvee pulled out of the lot and was on the country road before the first soldier even made it to the closest door.
Using the mayhem that was happening below him, he allowed himself to look more fully through the skylight to the warehouse space below. Not seeing any sign of the young man, he stumbled forward once again to a second skylight higher up, this one was dark though.
Shouts and orders, being barked by senior officers, increased in volume, spreading out around the building. A large number of uniformed individuals broke in two different directions, one group moving towards the Humvees and another towards the helicopters.
Joel strained his improved vision to see down into the dark pit that was below the window.
Small room? Desk… shelves… person?
Even with his nocturnal abilities he couldn’t see clearly, but he was fairly sure there was a human figure laying on the ground of the room below him.
Could be anyone…
He laid down, placing his ear to the wet pane of glass, and listened.
A faint heartbeat was just audible amongst the patter of the drops. He recognized it as Donnie’s.
He stood and looked around the building. A group of soldiers were now standing around the aircraft and the Humvees, guarding them, even though it was too late.
Other heavily armed soldiers were fanning out in all directions, no doubt to create a security cordon. There was no way out even with his abilities. And that was counting on Donnie being in a healthy state which Joel presumed he wasn’t going to be.
And then he remembered the hole. The one full of vamps, but led straight back to the prison. A one-way ticket to hell.
Without hesitation he jumped up into the air, and then dropped down, smashing through the glass, and landed a foot away from the captive. With one movement he swept him up in his arms and leapt back up into the air and back out through the skylight.
The boy in his arms was badly beaten.
Bastards.
His rage pushed him forward, his eyes darkening, and he sprinted across the roof as it rose and then fell away. As he neared the edge he took to the air with an almighty leap. Neon streams from bullets cut through the rain, but all missed such was his momentum.
He landed a few yards from the tunnel entrance on the bank and surged forward, plunging into it, into darkness.
By now, Donnie was across his back, allowing him to use his other hand to steady himself as he staggered down the deep slope.
As it started to level out, he felt something behind him, something not human but not a full vamp. An Alkron of some kind.
He had no intention of finding out what new hideous thing this was, and pushed his limbs to cover the ground faster.
He sprinted across the junction, only being peripherally aware of the monsters that were in the tunnels to his left and right, and then jumped, hopped, and trod on the others in the tunnel that he hoped headed towards salvation.
The vamps around him were awake, it was night after all, but they seemed disinterested in the hybrid blur moving past them.
The new thing though, the one that was chasing him, that kept on coming.
He made it to a cavern and stopped.
Now what?
The body over his shoulder started to stir. He placed him down gently then leaned closer to his face. “Donnie? It’s me, Joel, we’re in the cavern, but I don’t know which way to go?”
Donnie growled something. “U…”
Joel leaned closer, so he could feel the young man’s breath on his ear.
“Uu-pp.”
Joel felt Donnie’s arm and then hand indicating a point in the darkness, ahead and above them.
“Good enough. Can you walk? Climb?”
“Yeah… think so, help me up.”
Joel pulled him to his feet.
Donnie staggered forward. “This way…”
They both walked across the loose ground as quickly as they could without having much of any idea of which direction they were heading in. Unlike when it was night on the surface, and Joel’s vision allowed him to pick up the slightest hint of light for him to find his way, this far underground there was nothing, not even the hope of illumination.
Joel slammed up against a cold damp muddy wall first.
“We gotta climb. Use your claws or whatever you hybrids got…”
Donnie’s voice was already a few feet above Joel.
Joel drove his hand into the clay as Donnie suggested, finding something to grasp then did the same with his boots, and then his other hand, starting to pull himself upwards.
As he did he became acutely aware that they were not alone in the darkness. Not that he could hear a third heartbeat, because there w
as none, just Donnie’s and his own, reminding him he was alive, in his ears.
Nevertheless he kept climbing.
“I’m at the pipe!” shouted Donnie above him.
Joel looked up, trying to see any sense of form in the darkness to let him know he was climbing in the right direction.
“Follow my voice!” shouted Donnie.
Joel did just that, altering his course. Pushing his muscles as much as he could. Allowing the vampiric rage inside him to push him upwards.
And then he felt it. The air pressure changed around him, it became warmer, heavier. And with it, something grabbed his ankle. A human hand, but with a vicelike grip.
He looked down, but there was nothing there, only darkness.
“Are you there?” shouted Donnie once more.
“There’s something… someone holding me, gripping my leg!”
Joel tried with all his strength to pull his leg free, but it wasn’t letting go.
“It must be a vamp. Just kick it off!” shouted Donnie.
But Joel knew this wasn’t a vamp. He kicked away with his other boot, and then that became stuck. Gripped in midair. He then realized something was pulling him from the rock face, something that couldn’t be real.
“Something’s got me, something—”
Joel’s voice was cut short as another hand clamped over his mouth. He wanted to yell, shout, struggle. Do something to be free of this invisible thing that was holding him.
He was sure it was an Alkron, something no one had seen before, and then he saw something that confirmed it.
First it was just a shadow in the darkness. Then, slowly, the shadows started to solidify into a fine mist that swayed with a breeze that Joel couldn’t feel.
“I’m coming back down!” shouted Donnie.
Joel tensed his muscles to drive this thing off of him, but nothing made any difference. And then the mist became a face, one that was smiling.
Joel knew he was looking into a man, a man that could become a ghost.
He could hear Donnie getting closer. The face in front of Joel looked up, still smiling.
This amphoral spider would soon have them both and there was nothing he could do about it.
But then hope. A sound, distant at first, but quickly gaining in volume. Scuffling was coming from the pipe above. The monster’s particle face changed. Now it was angry.
