by Rob Cornell
“Fucking vampires,” Lockman said, stomach twisting at the sight. Been a long time since he'd seen one, let alone watched one die. He'd had his fill, but two more came out the front door.
Lockman was ready for them. He used both hands on the Glock, took on a regulation shooter's stance, and nailed them both in the head as they rushed out. He'd lost count of how many rounds he'd fired from which gun, so he retrieved the gun he dropped, released the clips from both guns, and put the fresh clips in.
The approaching sirens now sounded as close as the next block.
Reloaded, cocked, and unlocked, he stooped low and crept back into the house. He walked right by all the dropped machine guns belonging to the vamps. Vamps wouldn't load their own weapons with silver, which meant the rounds would do little more than slow them down. Besides, if he wanted to get the girl out of there he couldn't very well spray the place down with bullets. That wasn't the way to get someone you wanted alive. Too bad the vamps hadn't figured that out before they took on Lockman.
The tear gas had dissipated enough for Lockman to stand it. His eyes watered a little. He refused to wipe the tears away until he had scanned the house. No sign of them up on the loft. But they could be standing back, out of sight. He peered into the kitchen. Undisturbed except for the open drawer where he had stored the crucifix.
The sound of police sirens spiked right outside, then wound down almost immediately. Lockman's ears rang from the gunfire, but through the broken front door and obliterated window he could hear car doors popping open. The tromp of hurried footsteps.
A parody of an old classic song ran through Lockman's head.
Cops to the left of me, vampires to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with...
With some little girl who claimed she was his daughter.
What the hell had he let himself get into? If the cops got hold of him, the red tape for the Agency to get him out would be horrendous. They might even let him hang to dry, State secrets and all. And if the vamps got him first, a life sentence served in solitary would look like a luxury cruise in comparison.
Only one answer. Don't get caught. Period.
He glanced at the stairs leading to the loft. If he went after the girl... No. He didn't have time to think this through. Act. Now.
He charged the stairs, both guns up and ready to fire. As he raced up to the loft, his view of the space opened. The exercise equipment came into sight first. Then he saw the girl lying on the weight bench, her hands bound behind her, her makeup a black mess across her face. He readied himself to take careful aim as he cleared the last step.
No vamps.
He froze at the top of the staircase, heard authoritative shouts from the front of the house. The cops. Lockman tried to make out specific words, but mostly heard the tension and panic in their tone.
“Where did they go?”
The girl, crying, looked at the open window.
Then he heard the barrage of gunfire outside. Then silence. Then a horrifying but purely mortal scream. Apparently the vamps had decided the police were a larger threat to their operation than Lockman. And they didn't have to worry about keeping the cops alive.
He rushed to the girl and found her wrists tied under the bench with a plastic zip tie. He dug his pen knife out of his pocket and sawed at the plastic band until it snapped. “They might be feeding on those cops, which will make them a lot stronger. We have to get out of here.”
The girl stared at him with raccoon eyes, her body limp. Lockman checked her exposed skin for signs that she'd been fed upon, didn't see anything.
He shook her. “Snap out of it.”
The girl's pallor had already looked sun-deprived when he first saw her. Somehow even more color drained from her face. Her mouth moved silently.
“Damn you.” He shoved the Glocks into his back pockets, lifted the girl from the bench, and threw her over his shoulder. “What did you do with the crucifix?”
He was mostly talking aloud, not expecting any response from her. But she groaned and said, “Dropped.”
Then he saw it on the floor in the corner by the window. He trudged over and retrieved it. Crucifix in hand, teen girl over his shoulder, he hurried down the stairs. “What do you think?” he asked and headed through the kitchen to the back door. “Is your dad everything you had hoped he'd be?”
She didn't answer.
Chapter Five
Cracked, dry asphalt with the occasional sprig of browning weeds rolled past Jessie's vision. He carried her through an alley. She could smell trash and saw garage doors and dumpsters if she looked to either side, everything turned upside-down while she rode on the muscled shoulder of this guy she thought could be her father.
She wanted to ask him where he was taking her, why there were people dressed all in black shooting at them, why the hell he had given her a metal cross like it might do something to stop them? Questions, questions, questions.
Instead, she hung limp and let him carry her. She didn't have the strength for much more. Not after what she'd seen...and heard.
Their voices. What was wrong with their voices?
They came out of the alley and all at once she was swinging off his shoulder and onto her feet. Her knees gave out from under her but he held her up with an arm around her waist and the bulk of her weight against his hip.
“I know you're in shock,” the man who may or may not have been Craig Lockman said. “But you have to move on your own. They'll smell our trail and be on us again soon.”
Then there were those weird things he kept saying. Like what was that about the gunmen feeding on the police?
She was barely—well almost—fourteen. That didn't make her an idiot. Clearly the guy she thought might be her dad was a nutcase. He was talking about those military dudes like they were animals. Smelling and feeding. Jesus.
“Are you listening?” His face loomed close to hers.
She blinked, nodded, and locked her knees so she could stand on her own.
Lockman pulled a set of keys from his pocket and thumbed a fob. He pointed to a Honda Civic parked at the near curb. “Get in the car.”
A sound, what at first Jessie thought was the screech of tires on pavement, echoed down the alley from where they'd come. Jessie turned and saw one of the masked men standing in the alley. No car, though. And nothing else that could have made that noise.
“Now,” Lockman (had to be him, she might as well stop trying to dodge the truth) said and pulled her toward the vehicle then opened driver's side door.
She glanced from the open door to him. “I...I can't drive.”
“And you can't shoot. I'd rather we took our chances with you behind the wheel.”
Before she could say another word, the masked man from the alley was right there. He'd somehow traveled a distance of thirty or so yards in a few seconds. Impossible.
Lockman, not fazed by the sudden appearance, whipped the cross out from his back pocket and held it forth like...well, like people did in movies with vampires. That was just crazy, right?
The masked attacker recoiled and that shrieking sound buzzed against Jessie's eardrums loud enough to make her shrink back. No doubt this time. The sound came from the man. Or whatever he really was.
“The car,” Lockman growled through clenched teeth.
Jessie didn't hesitate another second. She slipped behind the wheel and grabbed at the set of keys Lockman offered with his free hand.
The masked man/thing had backed away only about ten feet. He hunched his shoulders and scuttled back and forth as if trying to find a way past some invisible obstacle.
Jessie started the engine. Lockman kept the crucifix aimed at the attacker and skirted around the front of the car to the passenger side. Then something landed on the roof of the car.
The impact startled Jessie into kicking the gas pedal and revving the motor while the car remained stationary, still in park. She shrieked as the roof buckled slightly. Another alien screech tore at the frayed rema
ins of Jessie's nerves. She felt her body going cold. This couldn't be happening. None of this.
Gunfire erupted once again. Jessie ducked and covered her head, expecting a bullet to blast her head off at any moment.
Then Lockman dropped into the passenger seat. “Drive.”
Jessie's hands shook. Somehow she managed to put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. She clipped the bumper of the car parked in front of them, but she didn't let that slow her. She mashed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The engine revved and whined.
“Ease up on the gas,” Lockman instructed.
But she didn't want to ease up. She wanted to get the hell away from there as fast as possible. Focused entirely on speed, she didn't consider accuracy. The steering wheel didn't make the car respond as quickly as she expected. Before she could straighten out on the road she smashed into another car parked on the opposite side. They jerked to a sudden halt and a black clad body rolled off the roof, down the windshield, and onto the hood.
Jessie screamed.
“Don't worry about him,” Lockman said and twisted in his seat. “He aimed one of his pistols over the back of the seat and fired three times through the back window.
Jessie's ears rang. She cranked the wheel all the way to the left and pressed on the gas. The car's front end grinded against the car she’d hit. The engine groaned.
Lockman looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get unstuck,” she shouted in answer.
“Reverse might have been a better choice.”
Reverse hadn't even occurred to her. Despite all the chaos going on around her, she felt her face turn hot.
Before she could switch strategies, their car scrapped along the length of the other and curled away, back onto the road. The body on the hood rolled off the side and out of view.
This time Jessie eased off the gas and lined up the car to the road. Once she felt like they were straight enough, she jammed on the gas again. “Where are we going?”
Lockman fired once more out the back window. “Shit.”
“What?”
“Silver's stopped working.”
She glanced in the rearview and saw another of the masked men, maybe the one from the alley, sprinting along behind them and gaining. A check of the speedometer showed the needle creeping toward forty.
“Back up is probably on the way. More cops are definitely on the way. Shit.”
They were approaching an intersection that came to a T. She would have to turn or end up crashing straight into the face of a tall apartment complex.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Straight.”
“The road ends.”
“Don't worry about the road.”
“I'm worried about a lack of road.”
“Just do as I say. And give it all the gas we've got.”
She bit the inside of her cheek and lifted her butt off the seat so she could stand on the gas pedal. She had imagined a lot of possible scenarios about meeting her father for the first time. Everything from finding a famous movie mogul that took her in and helped make her into the next Spielberg, to his outright rejecting her, telling her he never wanted a daughter and didn't want to get to know her. None of those scenarios depicted anything close to this.
A surprising thrill ran through her.
They careened toward the intersection. Jessie’s heart pounded in her chest. A metallic taste rolled over her tongue. She’s bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed. What was she doing, listening to this guy? If she kept on the gas, they would die. Smashing into the face of a building going nearly fifty miles per hour (and without her seatbelt on, she realized) guaranteed death, if not a permanent vegetative state.
Almost to the intersection, Jessie screamed, “I can’t do this,” and slammed on the brakes. Momentum carried them past the stop sign and into the intersection, the car sliding sideways while the tires howled against the pavement.
Lockman opened fire even while they slid out of control. Each shot felt like a nail through Jessie’s eardrum. She hung onto the steering wheel while centrifugal force wanted to tear her out of her seat and throw her through the windshield. Just as she felt like she couldn’t hold on another second, the car jerked to a halt and Jessie slammed into her seat.
The engine had quit. Horns blared from the cars that had nearly entered the intersection at the same time they had come sailing in. Most of the bleating quit when Lockman fired a few more times at their pursuer. Jessie looked out her window, which now faced the way they had come, saw the bullet’s strike the running figure, once in the leg and once in the chest. The man staggered, but got right back to sprinting for them as if a couple bullet wounds were little more than insect bites.
“Damn. He must have ate good.”
Jessie twisted in her seat to face Lockman. “Ate good?”
He sat forward and dropped his guns to the car floor. “Ammo’s out. Time for me to drive.” He lifted her over his lap as if she weighed nothing, then slid behind the wheel and set her in his place in the passenger seat. He turned the key, got the engine started. “Say what you want about foreign cars.” He peeled out just as the man in black reached the intersection.
Jessie turned to look out the back in time to see the man raise his machine gun and start firing at them.
Chapter Six
“Hi. I’m Kate Cohen. Jessie’s mom.” She held her hand out to shake with the woman who had answered the door.
The woman looked down at Kate’s offered hand as if it held canned botulism. “I’m sorry, who?”
“Jessie. Ryan’s girlfriend?”
The woman’s lip curled. It did not flatter her one bit with all the wrinkles around her lips from what had to be a life-long nicotine habit. Not to mention the stench of smoke that had wafted out when the woman first opened the door. The inside of the house smelled like a bowling alley.
“Ryan ain’t got a girlfriend.”
Oh, nice. “Well, I have met him. He’s been to our house many times.”
The woman shook her head. “Nope. Not my Ryan.”
Kate forced a smile. Looked like her daughter had about as much taste in men as Kate had when she was younger. Of course, she never had anything close to a boyfriend until high school. She had not been at all pleased with the label when Jessie first used it to introduce Ryan Whitaker. But the boy had seemed nice enough, and Kate made sure they were in sight whenever he came to the house. If they did any making out, they would have to do it somewhere else.
“Can I see him?”
“Ryan? What for?”
“I’m looking for my daughter. I thought he might know where she was off to.”
“She ain’t here.”
“Please, Mrs. Whitaker. I only want a few minutes.”
Her curled lip twisted to a thoughtful frown. She shrugged. “Whatever.” She stepped aside and let Kate in. The stench grew twice as thick once over the threshold. She tried to stop herself from coughing and made an even worse gagging sound.
Mrs. Whitaker eyed her wearily. Then she screamed, “Ryan.”
Kate started.
From down a nearby hall came a muffled response. “What?”
“Someone here to see you.” Her shrill voice sounded like it could shatter the glass to a nearby display case featuring a collection of ceramic dolphins. Dolphins and a bowling trophy, complete with golden figure wielding a bowling ball ready to launch down the alley.
“Nice house,” Kate said and tried to hang onto her smile.
The woman grunted as if calling out Kate on her false compliment.
They stood in the living room under one of the more awkward silences of Kate’s life. When Ryan finally came out, Kate almost gasped with relief. His hair was tousled as if he’d just rolled out of bed. He looked bleary-eyed at Kate and his jaw dropped.
“Hi, Ryan. I’m glad to finally meet your mother.”
Mrs. Whitaker gave her son that same botulism lo
ok she’d given Kate at the door. “You going out with her daughter?”
Ryan ducked his head, shrugged.
“You fucking her?”
Kate started for the second time.
“Mom, come on,” Ryan whined. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Well, are ya?”
“No.”
The answer didn’t seem to relieve Mrs. Whitaker. And now that the subject was out there, Kate had to admit she wasn’t too sure herself. She couldn’t watch her daughter at all times. Why did they feel the need to hide their relationship from Ryan’s mother? Did Mrs. Whitaker know something that gave her reason to suspect they were...? Kate squeezed the thought out of her mind. She hadn’t come here to find out about Jessie’s sex life. Not that she wouldn’t file this conversation away for a later date, once Jessie was back home safe and grounded for life.
“Look, Ryan. Jess didn’t come home last night. I was hoping you might have an idea where she is.”
He shrugged again, his gaze still aimed at the floor.
Mrs. Whitaker slapped him upside the head. “You look at the lady when she talks to you.”
Ryan scowled, but he lifted his gaze to meet Kate’s. “I don’t know.”
He said it with a straight enough face. Still, something tingled at the back of Kate’s neck. Call it Mother’s Intuition. She sometimes referred to it as her spider sense. Basically, it boiled down to knowing your kid well enough to know when they were lying. And sometimes that skill translated to her friends.
“Are you sure?” Kate asked.
“I haven’t seen her, sorry.”
Hands on her hips, Mrs. Whitaker turned to Kate. “You want me to search his room?”
“For what?”
“Condoms.”
“No. That isn’t necessary. I...” How could she put this? “Ryan, I know Jess shares a lot with you. You two might think I don’t have a clue, but I know you care about her as much as she cares about you.”
“Oh, miss, I think you’re giving my boy too much credit,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He’s a good kid and all, but he’s a dog like his father was, too. A dog who doesn’t know when to keep it in his pants.”
