by P. T. Hylton
“No kidding?” Patrick asked. He called over his shoulder. “You hear that, everybody? Our boy George is popping his cherry on this mission.”
George scowled, turning even redder. “Thanks for putting it so delicately.”
Patrick nudged his arm. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. Just a couple things to keep in mind. One: don’t let a Feral rip you to pieces.”
George looked like he might be ill.
“Two,” Ed said, jumping in. “Don’t do anything that’ll get us ripped to pieces.”
Patrick nodded sagely. “Come to think of it, that’s probably more important than the first rule. Number three: if you see Ed crying in the corner like a scared little bitch, slap him in the face and tell him to man up.”
“Hey!” Ed shouted.
“That rule seems a bit sexist,” Owl called back. “Who’s to say a little bitch is more likely to cry in the face of danger than a man?”
Patrick shrugged. “I’m open to feedback.” He turned back to George. “Final rule: have fun. Also, don’t die. Rule four has two parts.”
Wesley called up to George from a seat near the back. “Don’t listen to him, George. Just concentrate on helping Owl fix our ship. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“Agreed,” Chuck said. “It’s dangerous out there, but so are we. Even those two idiots razzing you take care of business when it’s mission time.”
“Yep, we’ll take good care of you,” Ed agreed. “And you get bit by a Feral, we’ll blow your head off before you turn.”
“Wonderful,” George said.
Alex reached back and slapped him on the knee. “Relax, you’ll be fine. Remember, you volunteered for this mission. Whatever happens, you’re going to have one hell of a story.”
Fleming sat at his desk, staring intensely at his radio, trying to comprehend the report that Kurtz had just given. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? Because I’m positive I didn’t hear that right.”
Kurtz cleared his throat and spoke again. “We got a report that Colonel Brickman was spotted near the water-processing facility.”
Fleming gritted his teeth. “That’s what I thought you said. But that would be impossible, as we have him cornered in this building. The only way that could be accurate is if he somehow slipped past your people. Since you have the entire GMT and nearly every badge in the city outside, tell me how that could happen.”
There was a long pause, then Kurtz said, “I don’t know, sir.”
Fleming slammed his hand on the desk. “Then you’d better fucking find out!”
Sarah watched all this as she picked at her nails, a habit she had given up five years before. She got up and spoke into the radio. “Give us a couple minutes, Kurtz.”
She clicked the radio off without waiting for a reply. She’d tried being the faithful employee, the trustworthy friend, and even the doting woman for Fleming. But she was beginning to realize that wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed her to be the stern mother.
He stared at the radio in disbelief. “How dare you just—”
“Shut up. Another outburst isn’t going to get you out of this situation.”
He looked up at her, shocked. “Outburst? What else am I supposed to do? Have you seen the incompetence I’m dealing with? If we can’t even control this ship, how the hell am I supposed to take back a planet?”
“Let me ask you a question,” she said, keeping her voice as calm as possible. “Is Kurtz in charge of this city?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s right. Kurtz isn’t in charge. You are. If Kurtz isn’t cutting it, fire him and get someone who can do the job. But that’s a problem for tomorrow.” She slid around the desk, then leaned against it. “For today, the city needs you to do what you do best. We need you to be the man you were when you took control of this city. The one I took a bullet for. I need you to use your head, think it through, and problem-solve.”
He squinted up at her, still angry, but at least coherent now. “What do you think I’ve been doing? There’s a thousand problems coming at me every hour. How am I supposed to—”
“Then deal with them one at a time. Start with CB. Supposedly he’s in this building and at the water-treatment facility. At least one of those things isn’t true. Think it through.”
He glared up at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to slap her. Then his radio chirped again, and Kurtz’s voice came through. “Sorry to bother you again, sir. We’ve had another report. CB’s been spotted in the agricultural sector.”
Fleming looked confused. Then a slow smile spread across his face. “Thank you, Sarah. You’re right. I let my emotions get the best of me. I need to concentrate on what I do best. And if Colonel Brickman thinks he’s going to outthink me, he’s going to be viciously disappointed.”
Sarah nodded. “I can’t wait to see you smash him.”
Fleming picked up the radio. “Kurtz, ignore the CB sightings. They’re false reports. He’s trying to play us.”
Kurtz’s voice sounded hesitant when he answered. “Are you sure, sir?”
“Yes. And I’m not so sure he was in this building, either.” He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment as he thought. “Here’s what I want you to do. First, try to get the names of anyone who calls in a CB sighting. There’ll be a price for those traitors to pay when this is all over. Second, find someone we can trust in engineering and work with them to figure out how CB hacked into the security network. That may not be the last breach. I want every network room monitored. And if the door to any of them opens without authorization, I want you to bring the GMT down on the intruder’s head before they make it two steps into the room. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Kurtz immediately replied.
“Good. Make it happen.” He clicked off the radio without waiting for a sign-off from the colonel.
Sarah smiled at Fleming, a true smile that made her eyes shine.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“It’s good to have you back, sir.”
Owl glanced over at Alex as the truck pulled into the old city of Denver. “This is going better than expected. Should I be worried?”
Alex shrugged. “Probably. But let’s not complain. Enjoy the good luck while you can.”
The road to Denver had been surprisingly clear. Jaden and his vampires must have pushed aside most of the obstacles, leaving the way open for the GMT’s smaller borrowed vehicle.
Owl slowed the truck as they approached the city center. Suburban homes and smaller commercial buildings gave way to larger structures as they approached the crash site.
“Sure is different driving in,” Owl mused. “You get a better sense of the size of the city.”
Alex nodded her agreement. The sprawl of the city was hard to ignore when you were driving through it. The only other time she’d driven through the city, she’d been so focused on getting to Agartha before sundown that she hadn’t really taken it all in. She imagined what life would have been like before the infestation, maybe being a person who lived outside the city and drove in to work every day. This highway would have been crowded with cars. It must have been noisy then. Though the noise would have been preferable to the oppressive, dead silence that hung over the city now.
A few minutes later, Owl pulled to a stop near the away ship’s landing site. One glance out the window revealed that much had changed since their last visit.
She glanced at Owl. “Stay in the truck with George for now. Until we know it's safe.”
Owl nodded, her eyes fixed out the windshield. “Safe isn’t the word that comes to mind when I see that.”
Alex felt the same way. She turned to the team. “Everybody stay frosty. We have no idea what we’re walking into out there.” With that, she stepped out of the vehicle and took a good look around.
The last time she’d been here, the area had had the same dilapidated, abandoned look of the dozens of cities she’d traveled to in her time with the GMT. Now it looked d
ifferent. There was fresh destruction. The place looked like a warzone.
Patrick cocked a thumb to his left. “Um, didn’t there use to be a building there?”
Alex didn’t answer. Instead, she headed toward the crater that now sat where the water-treatment building had stood.
“What could have done this?” Chuck asked.
“One hell of a lot of explosives,” Wesley replied.
That was Alex’s assessment as well. She turned to the parking lot and saw the transport truck Jaden’s team had used. It lay on its side, a mangled wreck. Looking around the parking lot, she saw signs of a fight. Doors had been ripped from the surrounding buildings, and bullet holes peppered the rusted remains of ancient cars. Most of the windows were broken in the surrounding buildings, and the fire escapes were twisted and misshapen.
And then there were the bodies. Ferals’ corpses lay strewn on the streets like trash, burning in the morning sun. The smell of them was almost overwhelming.
“Hey, Alex,” Chuck called. “I found something.”
“What is it?” she shouted back.
“Um, I think it’s an arm.”
Alex trotted over and found him in the shadows beneath an overhang, nudging a severed arm with his boot. It had been ripped off at the shoulder. The sleeve that still covered the arm looked all too familiar.
“I think it’s human,” Chuck said.
She bent down and rolled the arm over. Her heart sank at what she saw. A patch on the sleeve read “Fort Stearns, Resettlement Site 1”.
“Holy shit,” Chuck said. “How’s that possible?”
Alex shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Wesley walked over to see what they were looking at. “Damn. Do you think they sent a team down to get the ship?”
Alex looked up at him. “This guy was killed in the street by a vampire. That happened at night.”
The flatbed truck Jaden’s team had driven to the city was sitting a bit further back from the crater and was still upright. The away ship was tied down on the bed of the truck.
Alex put her hands on her hips as she inspected the scene one more time. “Well, it appears to be safe now. Let’s get Owl and George.”
Owl was the first one to climb up onto the truck to get to the away ship. She wore a near-panicked expression.
“Is she going to be okay?” George asked.
“Probably,” Alex answered. “She had a, um, special relationship with her ship.”
“So I see.”
Owl ran her hand along the side of the away ship, inspecting it for damage. When she reached the front of the ship, she glanced into the cab of the truck and grimaced. “We’ve got two dead vampires here.”
Alex ran to check it out, followed closely by George. She opened the truck door and pulled herself up on the step and looked inside. A wave of nausea rolled through her. After everything she’d seen, she sometimes thought she was immune to being revolted to the point of physical illness. Then she saw something like this.
The vampire who’d been in the driver’s seat was nearly gone from the waist up. His head had been torn from his neck, and there were three large holes in his chest. The other vampire still had his head, but he’d taken more hits in the torso, leaving his chest with a hollowed-out look.
She felt George climb up behind her before she thought to stop him. He looked into the cab and gasped. “No.” He stumbled back to the road. “They can’t be dead. They’re immortal. I’ve known Adam and Tim my whole life.”
Owl hopped off the flatbed and ran over to Alex. “What the hell’s going on here? These guys were killed with high-powered sniper fire.”
Alex nodded absently. “Fifty caliber, by the looks of it.”
“So who was shooting at them?” Wesley asked.
Patrick turned to George. “Something you want to tell us? Maybe there’s another city no one’s bothered to mention?”
George shook his head, his eyes wide with horror. “No, of course not. We’re the only city. I mean, I thought we were until you showed up.” His head spun toward Alex. “We know it wasn’t anyone from Agartha who did this. That leaves New Haven. What have you done? You’ve killed our greatest protectors!”
“Okay, everyone take a beat and settle down,” Alex said. “We don’t know what happened here, and we don’t know if the rest of the Agartha vampire team is dead. For all we know they’re holed up in one of these buildings, just waiting for sunset.” She thought a moment. “George, use the radio in the truck and see if you can contact Jaden. Owl, Wesley, Chuck, you three work on loading the batteries into the away ship.”
“What about us?” Ed asked.
“You and Patrick are going to help me protect the perimeter while we figure out what happened here.”
The team went to work, silently doing their jobs. The first hour seemed to go by quickly, and as the sun moved across the sky, the sunlight fell across new corpses, lighting them on fire and adding to the already putrid stench. Alex began to worry that the ever-increasing fires might set one of the nearby buildings ablaze. The buildings were mostly made from brick and stone, and the Feral bodies burned hot and fast, but smoldered out quickly. There didn’t seem to be much danger of the fires spreading.
As Ed, Patrick, and Alex walked the perimeter, Ed said, “So what do you think?” New Haven Resettlers versus vampires. How does that even happen?”
“I still say they came down for the ship,” Patrick replied. “Maybe sunset snuck up on them and a few soldiers got left behind.”
“This is more than a few,” Alex pointed out.
“Then maybe they all got stuck down here after dark.” His eyes widened as an idea struck him. “Hey, if that’s true, their ship is still down here. We could use that to get home.”
Alex shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. There are too many dead Resettlers. You wouldn’t need a team this big to recover a ship.”
“I’m less interested in why they were here and more interested in whether they were human when they died,” Ed interjected.
Patrick nodded slowly. “That sort of makes sense. Maybe they got stranded down here and then the Ferals turned them.”
Alex wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. Why would a bunch of newly turned vampires attack Jaden and his team?
“There’s an easy way to answer the vampire question.” Ed walked toward a severed leg laying in the shadows. He picked it up by the boot and ripped off the pants.
“You are super gross,” Patrick said.
Ed ignored the comment and tossed the leg into the sunlight. It immediately burst into flames. “Yep, the Resettlers were turned.”
Alex scratched her head. The situation made even less sense if the Resettlers were vampires. There had been a major battle here. “The way I figure it, the Resettlers and Jaden’s vampires fought, which drew all the Ferals in the area. Then everything went to hell. The only question is why.”
“Alex!” George stood next to the truck, waving his hands.
She smiled at the Barton brothers. “Maybe we’re going to get a chance to ask Jaden what he saw firsthand.” She trotted over to George. “You got something?”
“Something. But it’s weak. Mostly static. Here.” He raised the radio handset and tried again. “Jaden, do you copy?”
For a moment, there was only static. Then a broken voice came through. “…only...city…get…ground.”
“That’s Jaden,” Alex said. “I never thought I’d be so happy to hear a vampire’s voice.”
George grinned. “I’m damn happy he’s alive. Now we just have to figure out how to keep him that way.”
Jaden’s voice came through the radio again. “Ship…remember…underneath.”
“It’s been like this ever since I got him on the radio. I’m getting maybe every third word.”
“We need to find a stronger signal. Tell you what, my team and I will take the radio and search the area. You help Owl with the ship. If we do find Jaden and his team, we may
need to help them make a quick getaway.”
15
“Nothing like a morning stroll to get the blood flowing,” Chuck mused.
“We in a city teeming with vampires,” Wesley reminded him. “Can you not say ‘get the blood flowing’?”
They were walking through the streets of Denver, working their way around the area in a circle to figure out where the radio signal was strongest. So far, they hadn’t had much luck. George assured them that the signal would eventually strengthen, and all they had to do was head in that direction until they re-established contact with Jaden.
Alex walked in front of the group, her eyes flickering between upper-level windows and ground-level doorways. Based on what they’d seen near the crater, she knew there were vampire snipers lurking in the buildings. She was hesitant to walk in the middle of the street for fear of giving them an easy target. Yet, if she walked too close to the buildings, she would risk a Feral potentially lunging at her from the shadows. There was no safe option, so she’d chosen a middle ground, walking close enough to the buildings that they weren’t completely in the open, yet far enough away that a Feral would have to risk a serious sunburn to attack them.
The key was keeping the team alert. It was a lot easier to stay on your toes when you were, say, under tons of sand in an ancient Las Vegas casino rather than walking through a city on a sunny day. Alex knew this situation could turn just as bad as that one had, though.
She’d given Patrick the radio in the hopes it would keep him from getting impatient and doing something stupid. So far, it was working, though Ed was practically steaming with jealousy that his brother had been given a special duty.
“You know what I can’t get used to about the surface?” Chuck asked. “The way the ground feels so dead.”
It was a strange way to put it, but Alex understood what he meant. On New Haven, there was always a slight vibration. It traveled from the deck up into your feet; it was a comforting sensation to those who had grown up on the ship. And not feeling it was odd, almost like your feet weren’t touching down at all.
