by M. Lorrox
Charlie points toward July and feels sick to his stomach. “Why did YOU, and that bastard Melgaard do those things to her? Is that how you end suffering?”
You’ve already decided your fate. How much longer shall we play this charade? Until your friends arrive perhaps? Mary frowns. “She was the answer to everything that held us back. Her blood gave us a way to control the zombie virus, allowing us to weaponize it in...new ways. Her blood is also the answer to our greatest challenge: sunlight.”
Charlie sighs. “When did you figure that out?”
Mary tilts her head. “When Melgaard studied the samples he collected from her.”
Charlie squints. Wait, I’m confused... It doesn’t matter. “How are you going to solve our greatest challenge?” He snickers.
“It’s complicated. But she makes a protein that will let us access the cell’s DNA replicating machinery, and with it, we can do gene therapy.”
Charlie shakes his head, then he motions out the window behind Mary to the green shimmering leaves of the valley. “Isn’t life enough?”
She doesn’t blink. “No.”
“And the people—the humans—that fill this world?”
She leans her head forward and motions over her shoulder and out the window. “You know better than most that they are the biggest part of this world’s problem. And with technology, they threaten its destruction. They must be eliminated, now.”
Charlie swallows. “You’re crazy.”
She laughs. “WE are the solution, Carles. You know it in your heart... Join me.”
He smiles and adjusts his grip on his sword. “All I know in my heart is that I’m leaving here with that girl, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
She smiles. “Isn’t there? ...July?”
She turns around to face Mary. In the light from outside, her irises swirl. “Yes?”
Mary leans toward her. “Melgaard is back! He’s right there!” She points at Charlie. “Tear him apart!”
July takes a deep breath and turns around to face a horrified and confused Charlie.
Hector passes through a set of doors into a small room where one wall is filled with a gigantic freight elevator, one wall has windows facing the valley, and the other wall has a large, steel, security door. He swipes to unlock the door, and a motor swings it open. He picks up the jugs, and as he steps into the door, he looks behind him. I made it. We’ve done it. Then he hits a large red button on the wall, and the door closes behind him.
After a two-hundred-yard trek down a long, dark passageway, he enters into a huge room with an angled ceiling forty feet above him. In front of him, the facility’s second helipad and helicopter. He smiles.
Inside the passenger area are rows of stacked boxes, and he rips open the top of one to check inside. “Excellent.” He lifts a stack of white coffee cover lids from the box and turns them over. Underneath, they have a slight pinkish-beige tint where the virion and Mithrilin solution was printed. He puts the covers back, then secures the two five-gallon jugs of the same solution between the boxes. He shuts the cabin’s side door and returns to the wall beside the passageway.
There, he opens an electrical panel box and throws a few breakers. To the side, he enters a keycode onto a pad, then a red light glows above a lever. Beside it is a label that reads CLOSED. He pulls the lever to the other side, and a green light above it illuminates a label that reads OPEN.
Across the enclosed helipad, motors churn, and the ceiling starts to withdraw. It’s angled so that the highest point is above the wall with the electrical panel box and other controls, and the lowest point is at the far side where the motors are. They slide the stiff, aluminum roof down and open.
The top of the roof is camouflaged with fake trees and dirt, and it’s heavy. The mechanism was designed to open quicker than it can close, for emergency take-offs and landings, but it still takes a few minutes to open entirely. Hector returns to the helicopter to begin its startup procedure.
While the helicopter’s starter motor begins to run, he checks the time. A little behind, but not bad. I still have time to hit the dairy factories before my worldwide airport tour.
He smiles over his shoulder at the boxes of coffee cover lids.
When July transforms into a large, wolfman-like creature, Charlie’s heart skips a beat. Che cazzo!
Where July stood less than a second ago now stands a beast over seven feet tall with huge hands and claw-tipped fingers. Her face is more canine than human, and her jaws are capable of fitting a human’s head inside them. She growls at Charlie, “I’LL TEAR YOU APART!”
“July! It’s me! Charlie!” One hand clutches his sword, but his other hand is pressed forward, hoping to keep her back.
“LIAR!” She takes a step forward, and the claws on her toes -click-tick- against the tile.
Charlie twists the sword in his hand so the blade’s edge faces toward him, and the back of it—the side that is blunt and thick—faces July. He knows when the razor-honed side of the blade is toward him; besides the different way the handle feels, he can feel the cold darkness emanating from the blade’s edge. It gives him a chill, and he grits his teeth in response. Remember our deal—Ketsueki Seishin, you cursed thing—I need to finish this before you finish me.
He lowers his arms and takes a step back. “July, please don’t do this.”
“I TORE YOU TO PIECES AND ATE YOU ONCE! I CAN DO IT AGAIN!” She lunges forward and swipes with her hand, her claws extended out to slash at Charlie’s head.
With his empty hand, he swings his fist up and connects the back of his knuckles with the beast’s wrist. -Crack!-
Charlie winces, but July howls. She cowers back and looks at her smashed wrist, then with a disheartening cry, she grabs the wrist with her other paw and squeezes the bones. They crunch and break more, then in a flash of light between her long, hairy fingers, the bones reform and heal. She looks back up at her enemy and growls. Strings of spittle hang from her fangs until they are blown forward from the strength of her breath.
Charlie swallows. Aw, come on. He grips his sword with both hands now, and with a breath, he focuses his energy. For no longer than an instant, in his mind, he returns to a moment from over three hundred years ago in Japan. The time when Muramasa Sengo, the holy swordsmith of legend, presented him with the sword he wields.
He said, “Arashi, meet Ketsueki Seishin. I have poured all the malice, darkness, and bloodlust that has been directed onto me and my life’s work into this blade. This dark emotion, I hope, will help feed the ancient evil I folded into this steel, one that knows no rest. I have created the most powerful, most deadly, most distrustful sword the world will ever know. I entrust it to you to protect it from those who would use it for evil, for then its power would grow along with its thirst. Rise, Arashi-Ōdachi, Guardian of the Cursed Blade of the Ancient.”
9,000 miles away in Northern Virginia, Rusty wakes up in an empty hotel bed. He leaps off and scampers to the bathroom, but there’s no one there. He runs to the AC unit by the window, jumps his front paws onto it, and pokes his snout under the curtain. A cloud passes in front of the sun and casts a huge shadow. He drops down, then runs to the door and claws at it. The repeated -crrick, crrick- of his claws dragging down the door carry into the hall, but there’s no one there to hear him.
Charlie squeezes his sword and feels the blood rushing through him. It pounds in his chest, but it doesn’t rattle his mind. His breath adds strength to his determination, and he waits for the moment to act.
July swings again, and Charlie slams the back of the sword into her forearm, shattering both bones in it. She swings with her other hand, and Charlie attacks it too, but the impact isn’t enough to break bone. Her left arm pushes in, and the tips of her claws slice through the right side of Charlie’s face.
He groans and steps his back leg behind him, then crouches to the gro
und under her arm. He swings the sword around in a circle, switches the direction of the blade with a flick of his wrists, and slams the blunt edge into the other side of the same arm. -Crack!-
Another step around, and he’s to her side. He draws the katana back for another blow.
Flashes of pain initially stun her, but when it builds into a crushing heat, she uses it. She lunges toward Charlie, and as the back of his blade swings toward her left shoulder, she bites into his left shoulder, crushing his collar bone and cracking his shoulder blade between her teeth.
He screams and drops his sword.
Mary smiles and licks her lips as the steel bounces against the floor.
While July still crunches into Charlie, she squeezes against him with her broken forearms. The pain she feels is a constant scream, and her vision narrows.
Charlie wraps his left arm over her jaw and grabs around her snout—his fingers between her long fangs. He grabs across her lower jaw with his right hand, and grips under her mandible with his thumb and his fingers between sharp molars. Then, he drops his weight.
As his body falls, he uses every bit of his strength to unclamp the giant maw from his thick shoulder. He pulls the fangs from his flesh, and blood pours from the wounds. When he stands back up, he has her jaws in his hands in front of him.
July smacks at him with her forearms, each impact sending a white blast of pain into her mind, but Charlie holds tight.
He continues to wrench her jaws open, further and further, and he screams with exertion. The pink ridges in her mouth glisten in the red light, and the pair of tonsils on the sides of her throat quiver.
She lifts a foot up and kicks it forward; the claws slice through Charlie’s top and into his abdomen. Half-inch long tears rip down until her toes hit his belt.
He loosens his grip and throws her back, away from him, and he falls to the ground.
July steps her foot with blood-coated toes back, and she shakes her head. She roars at him with her fury, and spit flies on her breath six feet to land on him. She flicks her arms to the side, and they flash as they heal.
Charlie trembles when seeing the unbelievable energy contained within her. His wounds slow him as he reaches for his sword and as he wraps his fingers on the ancient, red, silk-wrapped handle.
July takes a step forward, and she swings both arms up above her head. With fingers and claws extended, she swipes down at the bleeding man on the ground before her.
Charlie rolls to the side and swings his sword.
Her claws crush the three tiles on the ground, sending little pieces of white ceramic into the air.
Charlie strikes with all his might. When he lands his blow, the blunt edge of his sword smashes into the side of her head. It had enough speed and momentum to crush through a human’s skull, but it merely cracks July’s.
The jar to her brain is enough to give her a concussion, and the silver-furred beast drops to the ground. In another quick flash, she’s back to her new-normal, human-looking form without hair and with scars covering her body. She lands on the broken tile, unconscious and naked except for a silver necklace with a bead strung on it.
Mary claps her hands. “That was very impressive!”
Charlie looks up at her in amazement. “You’re a fucking sicko.”
She smiles. “Maybe.”
Charlie gets to his feet. “You won’t mind if I have something to drink, will you?”
She laughs and motions to the fridge. “I’ve got some truly excellent blood in the fridge there, straight from New Zealand’s free-range sheep. Help yourself.”
He grabs his canteen. “Yeah, right.” He chugs the rest of the blood in it, tosses the empty canteen to the side, and feels better as his freshest wounds begin to heal. “You can’t beat me, Mary, I think I’ll just take July and leave. You can fuck yourself and die for all I care.”
She steps forward and pulls the blanket off her right shoulder with her left hand. She smiles as she tosses it at Charlie. “Oh, but we’re just getting started here. Would you mind covering her with this? I’d hate for her to be cold.”
Charlie catches the blanket and moves to cover July with it, but something catches his eye. He looks back at Mary and doubletakes. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Ghost clears the science level before proceeding to the residential level. Along the hall are other rooms, and one by one, she checks them. Most are filled with equipment or supplies, and none have any other pesky people with guns.
She makes her way back through the hallway and into the stairwell. There, she begins to head down a flight and hopes to soon find Ms. Wollstone, July, and Charlie. She’s about to open the door to what she’s been told is the residential level when she hears a door blasting open one flight below her. Then she hears footsteps, then a voice.
“I’m telling you, that explosion was from directly above us. Let’s go!” A security guard bounds up the steps two at a time and is currently facing away from Ghost, but soon he’ll hit the platform between the levels and turn. When he does, he’ll see her.
Another guard follows immediately behind. “Our orders were very clear, to hold our ground no matter—”
“I know, but there’s been no commands since, and I just know shit’s going down. You got my back or what?” The first guard reaches the platform and jogs a step, then he bounds up the stairs toward the door to the residential level.
The other security guard reaches the platform. “Yeah, I gotcha.”
Ghost lays across the steps that lead up to the next level—the one she just cleared—and she watches as the men reach the door to the residential level.
The first man pauses there and places his hand on the door. He turns to his partner. “Alright, I’ll go left, you go right.” He switches off his gun’s safety, then he pulls the door open. As he pokes his barrel into the door, then his head, the other man looks down to click his gun’s safety off. While his attention is directed toward his hands, Ghost attacks.
She springs from her hiding place, kicks off the wall beside the steps, and twists as she rockets toward the door with her katars extended in front of her. The long blades swirl into the rearmost guard’s chest, and he falls. Ghost lifts a leg and kicks against the door leading into the hall. The other guard is halfway through the door, and the steel door slams him into the doorframe, cracking three of his ribs.
Ghost tucks her blades to the sides, then she tucks her head to her chest. She lands on the corner of her breastplate armor at the shoulder, and she rolls with her momentum. She catches herself from falling down the stairs with her legs spread wide between a railing’s support and the wall.
The guard with the broken ribs pushes the door back open and grimaces as he turns gun-first into the stairwell.
Still in her split along the ground, Ghost raises her arm like she’s going to perform a karate chop. She releases the katar’s handle as she throws her hand and the blade forward. She flicks her wrist just enough to put the blade into a single spin, and it buries its three-inch wide self, six inches into his chest. He falls back, hits his head, and is dead before his ass hits the ground.
Ghost collects her katar from him, then she looks to her side when she hears the other guard cough up blood. He raises his gun to aim at Ghost and pulls the trigger, releasing bullet after bullet at her.
She jumps and spins. One bullet rips an inch of flesh from her calf, but the others miss her as she leaps above them. After one full twist, she connects the back of her heel with his head.
His body is against the wall, so it can’t give at all, and the force from her strike is plenty to snap his neck. The finger that was squeezing the trigger releases, and he drops the gun.
Ghost lands and winces. She checks her leg and groans, then she notices the wall behind her. A row of bullet holes in the concrete stretches upward, and dust settles to the ground. That
was a close one...
She stands and adjusts her ski-mask, then limps toward the door.
Mustang Jones checks his mirror before he changes lanes, and the large, white cowboy hat on his head -taps- against the window. He’s driving Jambavan and Madeline out of Rome, southwest, toward the coast.
Madeline keeps returning to the idea that she’s going to be asked to cut her hair and dye it blonde, and how stupid she thinks she’ll look. I can’t believe this... I should have never gotten involved with Li Chen and his stupid gang. Now I’m up to my eyeballs in crazy. She glances at Jambavan, and he notices.
He smiles at her, and then he looks out the window to the smaller city they’re driving through. It’s dark out, and the lights glow a warm orange in the night.
Madeline looks at him for another moment, and she feels her face wanting to grin. He’s not too crazy though.
Mustang pulls into the drive for a hotel, then he parks in a lot around back. He points at the hotel. “Qilin.”
Jambavan looks toward where he points, but there’s no one there.
Mustang pulls out his phone and makes a call. “Erano qui. ...Sì, indietro.” He puts his phone back into his pocket and pulls his keys from the ignition.
Madeline and Jambavan climb out and join Mustang as he leans on the back of his truck.
A moment later, the side door to the hotel is held open. Mustang makes a pistol-shape with his hand, and he fires it at the door. “Pough.”
They enter the hotel and find Qilin, but she turns and leads them up a stairwell without a word. They all follow. In the room—which Madeline notices only has two small beds—Qilin jumps up and gives Mustang a giant hug. “Grazie, Mustang!”
He pats her back. “No problem-oh, partener.”
She pulls back and shakes her head, then she sends Jambavan and Madeline a curt nod. “Alright, we’re in good shape here, ready for the good news?”
