Full Moon Rising - 02

by Heath Stallcup

  “Oui.” Rufus studied the younger vampire. “Although, I must admit, I question your ambition. And your sanity.”

  “Oh, I assure you. I am most definitely insane. You’d have to be to crawl into bed with some of the most ruthless cut-throat bastards that I’ve crawled into bed with.” Foster smiled.

  “I’m sure.” Thorn responded flatly. “Sounds like your normal bed-fellows.”

  “Oh no, no, no. I’m talking Mafioso, Yakuza, the Pokrovsky Klan, the Triad, you name it, and my fingers are in the pie. I’m the head vampire of all their blood-sucking enforcers.” Foster shifted in his chair and looked Rufus square in the eye, “I’m telling you, brother, it’s gotten to where there are times, I’m almost afraid to go to sleep each morning! I’m afraid I’m going to wake up dead!” he exclaimed. “Well. Um,…deader than when I went to sleep. These bastards are ruthless. And although they know how the pecking order works, sometimes they don’t always want to listen to their creators. Sometimes, the underlings decide to take matters into their own hands and actually try to kill their masters.

  “Can you believe that?! Ungrateful little bastards…”

  “And this is what you bring to me as an army? To face the darkness that brings the Apacolypto to our doorsteps?” Thorn asked.

  Foster fidgeted in his chair. “Well. If you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so great, does it?”

  “Non. It does not.” Thorn twined his fingers together and stared at Foster over his pointed fingertips.

  “Well, honestly, they aren’t all that bad. It really is just a few.” Paul argued. Thorn could tell that he was nervous as his British accent had been seeping through.

  “Relax, Paul. Come, have a drink with me.” Thorn took two glasses from a nearby table and picked up a decanter.

  “Me? Drink with you?” Paul chuckled. “Sorry old chum, but I don’t do goat blood.” He taunted. “You can keep the pig bile and sheep piss yourself…” Foster paused as he watched Thorn pour a thick orange-black liquid from the decanter. “Wait, is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  “Oh yes.” Thorn answered as he inhaled deeply of the rich nectar in his crystal goblet. He sipped it and sucked air across the thick liquid, savoring the bouquet. “Mmm. So flavorful.” He moaned.

  “Is that really what I think it is? Because it looks fresh.” Paul could feel his mouth salivating at the very thought.

  “It is fresh. Flown in just this very afternoon, for this very occasion.” Rufus admitted. “Elven blood.”

  “Where did you find Elven blood? They’re all but extinct.” Paul’s eyes were about to pop from their sockets.

  “I have my sources.” Thorn admitted. He turned to Foster. “Care to join me?”

  Foster made a poor attempt at containing himself. “Yes. I believe I would, thank you.”

  Thorn poured Foster a large goblet of the nectar and found Paul’s hands practically shaking when he accepted it. He tried to contain himself as he drank it, tried to savor each drop, but the thick nectar of the Elves was intoxicating to vampires. With a dark, toasted flavor and sweet aftertaste and intoxicating after effects, it was a rare and expensive treat. Both vampires sat back for a moment and enjoyed themselves.

  “Mmm. Do you know what this reminds me of?” Foster asked.

  “I know what it reminds me of.” Thorn answered. “Turkish coffees from my youth.”

  “Exactly! Oh, how I miss coffee with real cream.” He said. “And sugar.”

  “Exactement!” Thorn agreed.

  “Tell me something, Rufus.” Foster asked, feeling warm and fuzzy inside. “Why on earth would you share something like this with me? I know you’d just as soon rip my throat out as to look at me.” He smiled at the older vampire.

  “Oh, it is simple, my dear friend.” Thorn replied. “I truly intend to enter into the blood alliance with you. We will combine our forces and we will fight a glorious battle and hopefully, we will save the day for both mankind and vampires the world over.”

  “Yay for our side.” Foster said, drunkenly holding his goblet up in the air.

  “But as soon as the war is over and the alliance is satisfied? I intend to kill you.” Thorn smiled at his oldest friend…and both vampires laughed.

  *****

  The sun was just rising over Rome. The dark vampire known as the Sicarii stood once more in the second floor window of the cathedral. How many times had he prayed to God to remove the curse? How many times did he test his faith in God by watching the sun rise only to feel his flesh burn and smell the acrid smoke rise from his own skin? Too many to count. But yet, he still did it, like people who wake every morning and brush their teeth out of habit, the Sicarii prayed each night and awaited the coming sunrise, in hopes that this one time, his prayers had been fervent enough to garner His grace and lift the curse.

  As the night sky slowly lightened and the black became purples and blues, his mind flashed back once more to his youth. He remembered many nights walking and talking with the man he called his brother. He remembered many a sunrise that began much like this one. He remembered many things, but, he barely remembered his own name anymore. In fact, history didn’t even recall his name. Not his real name, anyway. It bastardized it. But he had been born Judah, son of a goat herder, raised by an Arab, trained as an assassin. At what should have been the peak of young Judah’s career as an assassin, he met a man that would forever change his life. It was a chance meeting, actually. He had been sent to kill a man that he couldn’t find. He searched throughout the town and the surrounding area to find him and yet, he simply was not there. When he finally tracked him down, the older man was sitting under a fig tree, listening to a young Jewish Rabbi tell of the world and the world that waited beyond. Judah saw many come and go, so he waited nearby. Surely the man would leave eventually. His son did not wish to wait for his inheritance and Judah was more than willing to assist in helping him to lay claim to it.

  But something strange happened as he sat and waited for the father to leave the lessons of the young Rabbi. He began to listen to the teachings and something inside him began to shift. It was as if the young rabbi was speaking to him but he was speaking in parables. He could have been speaking to any of the people there, but Judah could imagine…yes. It must have just been his imagination.

  The more he tried to tune out the young Rabbi, the more his words dug into his heart. The Jewish goat herder turned assassin found himself becoming a convert to this young Rabbi’s group of followers. And follow he did. He forgot about his agreement to kill the merchant, and he hid his knives away, all to follow this young Jewish Rabbi and act as his protector. This young Yeshua, who had opened his eyes to divine forgiveness, even for one such as himself? How could he not follow him? To the ends of the earth, if he would allow it.

  Oh, how the dark vampire hated these memories! He had loved the young Rabbi…as a brother. He had claimed to be the son of God, but he had also claimed that they all were the sons of God. How could he have known he truly was his son?

  The Sicarii dropped from the window, his flesh smoking. He fell to his knees as he had done so many countless times in the past and turned his eyes to the heavens, “How could you damn me for doing your will?” he cried. He sobbed and pounded his fists against the stone floors of the cathedral until the stones fractured, then collapsed upon the stones in a heap. “He begged me to do what the others could not…” he whimpered. “Only I loved him enough to do it.”

  As the dark vampire lie on the cold stone floor his flesh smoldering, more memories flooded his mind, as they always did when he allowed himself to remember. How after his damnation, he taught his killing skills to others. How he developed a secret society of the Sicarii to terrorize the Romans. He always blamed the Romans for their part in Yeshua’s death, and it was their fault for being in the Holy Land. How it was their fault that he had to be called to action…the very action that would damn him forever.

  Well, if the God of gods would curse him so, then he
would undo His creation. He would turn every man, woman and child into livestock for His worst creation…vampires. He would see it all burn before he would allow any of it to remain holy. If he could not live in the sun, then none shall…none that were pure, anyway.

  From the darkest corner of the courtyard, the little messenger watched the Sicarii scream to the heavens in anguish. He truly had no idea what his dark master was so upset about or who he was screaming to. Perhaps, God himself? He shook his head and slipped as quietly away as he could lest he be caught spying on him.

  11

  “OpCom, this is Second Actual, we are on approach. Landfall in two-zero minutes. Over.” Apollo called over the radio. The HH-60 was making excellent time with a tail wind helping to push them south of the border into north central Mexico.

  “Roger that Team Leader. Be advised, cleanup crews are en route and will be at your twenty in approximately four-zero minutes, over.” Laura replied from the Command Center. She was running a skeleton crew at the stations with a secondary crew on standby to work with Lt. Gregory in the event First Squad ran a third operation at the same time.

  She heard Apollo laugh into the mic. “You’re not allowing a whole lot of time for us to do our job, ma’am. Twenty minutes to clean up a zombie horde?” he chuckled.

  “Zombie horde, Apollo?” Laura shook her head and had to stifle her own laugh. “Intel shows less than a dozen slow-walkers. If you and your group can’t handle that, I can send in the girl scouts to take care of it for you, over.”

  “Negative OpCom. I wouldn’t wish those cut-throat little bitches on anybody! Those cookies of theirs will kill anybody!” he laughed.

  “Roger that, Actual.” Laura laughed. “We sent them early to test the corpses so we can determine the type we’re dealing with. If we can find the root cause while you and your crew are there, neutralize it. Over.”

  “Roger that OpCom.”

  Laura punched up the satellite imagery. It was still set for thermal and that wouldn’t help with the walking dead. They would be the same temperature as their surroundings. She tried to set it for actual, but it was too dark. Microwave didn’t work well either. Artificial IR worked best and at least showed activity in the area. The zombies were moving as a herd and as she panned out, she only spotted wildlife in the far fringes of the picture running from the dead. She pulled the GPS location of the herd and their heading and forwarded it to the pilot. Even if the herd should alter their course, upon hearing the craft come down to deposit the team, they would turn and head in that direction, bringing the two forces together.

  Apollo turned to his team and hit the button on his lip mic. “Remember, you may be inoculated against vampire bites, but not zombies. If you let one of these bastards get you, you’re gone, baby. Read me?”

  He was talking mostly to Mueller, the new guy on the team. “Roger that. I’ve seen the movies, man. Bites and bodily fluids, big no-no!”

  “More than that, man. Scratches can get you, too. You really got to watch yourself around zombies, man. They’re like a walking petri dish of nasty shit.” Popo added.

  “Intel says these are first generation slow movers, so we should be good. Moaners are real easy kills. They like to announce their intentions.” Apollo was looking straight at Robert now. “But you still gotta keep an eye on your six, okay? Some of these dudes get their throat ripped out before they’re turned and they can’t moan and let you know they’re coming. Plus, you get into a firefight and you can’t hear them coming anyhow. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Mueller gave him a thumbs up.

  “All right, buddy. Let’s make sure you get to go home and see your kid again.” Dom said, slapping him on the back.

  “This is a small group, so it should be easy pickings. OpCom wants us to help the Mr. Clean Geeks figure out where these boys come from. So once they do their shit with the microscopes and blood smears and whatever it is they do, we’re going to be hunting down the source.” Apollo announced. He heard a few moans from the team, but he quelled it quick. “We don’t want this shit to spread, now do we? Last thing we want is for half of Mexico to turn into zombies. Instead of jumping the border and taking jobs nobody wants, they’ll be shuffling across, moaning and biting ‘little Debbie the cheerleader’ and shit. Not good.” That earned him a few eye rolls.

  The pilot came across the coms and informed them that they would be making landfall shortly. Apollo barked at his team to lock and load. When the Pave Hawk touched down the door slid open and the five man assault team hopped out, keeping their heads low. The chopper remained stationary until all of the hunters were away from the draft wave then lifted off again until called back for evacuation.

  Apollo checked his compass and took point. His men spread out in a staggered ‘V’ formation behind him with Dominic checking their six from time to time. They crested a dusty ridge and saw the herd of zombies making their way toward where the helicopter had landed, their moans increasing in intensity. Apollo paused a moment and counted. “OpCom, this is Actual. Have we had any free-runners from the herd?”

  “Negative Actual. They’re still one group.” Laura replied.

  “Affirmative. We’re going to set up on this ridge and see if we can keep the carnage to this shallow valley below us. Over.”

  “Roger that. We’ll maintain visual.”

  “Copy.” Apollo turned to his men. “Kill zone below. Let’s spread out on this ridge here. Remember, head shots only. Anything else just splatters biologicals and the geeks don’t like it.” He got a quartet of affirmatives from his men as they spread out across the ridge, most laying down along the spine of the ridge and setting up their weaponry. The zombies were moving slowly so they had plenty of time, and their numbers were low, so this was literally like shooting zombies in a ravine.

  Once his men were set up, Apollo held their fire. The zombies had seen them and were trying to climb toward them, but the sides were too steep. “Let’s let the stragglers catch up a bit. We want as small a group as possible.” They could hear the other chopper with the cleanup crew approaching and the zombies all turned their heads at the same time at the approaching sound. “Fuck. Okay, fellers, drop ‘em where they stand!”

  The fire from the P90’s and Mueller’s M4 echoed across the small ravine and the squad made short work of the herd of walking dead that had wandered into the kill zone. Within seconds, everything without a heartbeat that had been standing lay upon the ground in a heap, holes smoking from their heads. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, nothing in the pile of bodies moved.

  Apollo stood from where he had been laying along the ridge and stared down at the zombies. Something wasn’t right about them. Not one of them had shoes, and many of them…their clothes were sliced up the back. Quite indicative of someone who had been processed and buried with a funeral. He pulled a rope from his pack and tied off to a small mesquite tree nearby and used it to go down the side of the shallow ravine. What he didn’t expect was the lack of stink. Most zombies were pretty ripe after dragging their asses across the Mexican scrub all day, the sun causing their bodily fluids and microbes to expand and make some pretty noxious gases. But these bodies appeared fresh. Aged, but fresh, and that wasn’t right.

  He pulled a camera from his pack and started snapping some digital pictures. He uploaded them to his PDA and forwarded them to OpCom. “OpCom, Actual. I’ve sent you some pictures of the tangos. Tell me if something doesn’t look a little ‘off’ to you. Over.”

  “Retrieving them now, stand by.”

  “What’s the problem down there, boss?” Dom asked.

  “I’m not sure, but these things look like they were dug up from a cemetery.” He said.

  “Who would do that?” Mueller asked.

  “Beats the shit out of me, brother, but I don’t like it.” Apollo said.

  *****

  Jack sat at the same table with Lamb and Jacobs. The protective bomb suit had long since been stripped off and put away. The thre
e men sat studying the various pieces of the satellite phone Thompson had brought back with him from the island.

  “From best I can tell, Chief, it’s just a phone.” Lamb said. “There’s definitely nothing explosive in it. There’s no tracking device that I can find. The thing wasn’t even powered on when you gave it to us.”

  Jack was scratching at his head. “This isn’t right. Nobody from the island knows the guy who supplied the phone. The guy who owns the island says he didn’t send it for me. There has to be a reason somebody slipped this to me.” Jack felt that the phone was a key puzzle piece. “But you’re absolutely sure that nothing is wrong with it?”

  “Boss man, the phone is a standard issue satellite phone.” Jacobs insisted. He picked up the motherboard, “Nothing added, nothing taken away.”

  Jack sighed. “Fine. I trust you boys. You’re more up to date on this stuff that I am. I’ve been out of the electronics field for too long.”

  Lamb’s eyes suddenly grew wide. “Hey. Wait a second. We never turned it on!” he snapped his fingers.

  Ing moaned. “Oh my god.” He ran a hand down his face. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “Software!” they both said at the same time.

  “Software? I’m not following you.”

  Ing leaned forward on his stool, “Chief, almost all phones these days have GPS built into them or it’s downloadable as an app or a software tool.”

  “Like a program you can run on a PDA.” Ronald added.

  “Okay, go on.” Thompson urged.

  “So, if whoever it was wanted to know where you were, all they had to do was wait until you turned the thing on to make a call. Whether you were calling from here… ‘hi honey, I miss you, kiss-kiss’ or you wait to call back in Texas and tell this dude you want to go back to the island…the phone saves the information.” Ing explained.

  “So everywhere I’ve been, and everywhere I take it, the phone’s GPS tracks it and stores it in memory?”