TWENTY SEVEN
In retrospect the one thing they did wrong while living on the little farm was let their guards down. They’d become comfortable there, rarely picking up weapons other than to hunt game or shoot targets. There was no sign of distress, no issues that threatened any of them; the four friends had no intentions of ever moving away from the farm, even Robbie had decided that life with his family would be better than the alternative. They all realized they were at home and planned to stay for as long as they could.
It was spring, and the rain was soft and comforting as Chris sat on the porch with Rick, talking late into the night. The moon was bright, and stars filled the sky. Then gunshots suddenly rang out in the air. The sheer surprise and the fact that the shots had come from seemingly nowhere startled them.
Rick pushed Chris to the floor of the porch and joined her there. They crawled through the front door of the house, where Rick kicked the door closed behind him. Chris, squatting to avoid the bullets that were scattering throughout the house and blowing through the windows, moved as fast as she could to get to where they kept their weapons in the bedroom.
The bullets were striking the walls behind Rick, destroying anything in their path: pictures, a vase, and everything that was on the wooden bookshelf. Rick crouched under the living-room window, attempting to keep cover. He then reached out and caught his Colt 1911 and a Remington 700 rifle, which Chris threw at him from the bedroom door just down the hall.
Chris ducked, closing the bedroom door behind her, and moved toward Rick’s side as bullets flew past her, narrowly missing her head. “What now?” she yelled over the gunfire.
“Hell if I know. Can’t even see where they’re shooting from!”
There was a slight break in the firing, which told Rick a lot about who was outside. They all had stopped shooting at the same time. If trained properly, some of them would have continued to fire while others were reloading. With this opportunity Rick sat up, placing his rifle through the window. Scanning the area through a high-powered scope, he saw three people on the left of the lake in the tree line and two more crouched behind the canoe near the water.
Rick saw they were all wearing black jumpsuits. “They’re M.M.,” he told Chris.
“What a surprise.”
Rick, positioning his firing eye directly behind his rifle’s scope, took aim at one of the men in the trees to the left. Although he knew the ones behind the canoe were closer and more of a threat, he chose that target because the other two wouldn’t know the people behind them were dead.
Controlling his breathing and with a steady aim, Rick squeezed the trigger. The powerful rife went off with an enormous boom that echoed throughout the house. As the bullet traveled through the air, it moved faster than anyone could see. By the time the M.M. soldiers heard the echo of the rifle, the round had hit its target directly between the eyes. The target flew off his feet, landing in the fetal position, dead before he hit the ground.
After a moment bullets riddled the house once more. The only thing Rick and Chris could do was wait and try to hold off the offenders.
“Hopefully the cavalry will get here soon,” Chris yelled.
“Yeah, well, those two had better hurry the hell up.”
Chris, next to Rick under the window, was taking aim at the two men behind the canoe. She pointed her shotgun and blasted at her targets, narrowly missing and hitting the canoe instead. She then dropped back to the floor to reload her weapon.
Unknown to the attackers, Billy and Robbie were at the house in the woods when they heard the weapons firing.
“Oh, shit,” Robbie said.
Without a second thought, they grabbed their weapons and made their way down the path toward the farmhouse, moving as fast as they could in the dark of the night. Billy ran faster than Robbie thought possible for an older man; Robbie was trying hard to keep up with him. Billy was now directly in front of Robbie, moving down the path with an intense fury as adrenaline rushed through his body.
Now within sight of two men on the right side of the farmhouse and a dead body on the ground, Billy and Robbie moved in behind the enemy. After pulling a Bowie knife from his waist, Robbie ran up behind one of the men and stabbed him directly in the neck, while Billy, with his two revolvers, shot the other man in the chest six times.
As soon as the two hit the ground, Billy and Robbie, wet from the rain and blood, crouched in the tree line as Billy reloaded then fired on the two soldiers behind the canoe. Surprised by whoever had flanked them, the two soldiers at the canoe turned their fire away from the house and fired at Billy and Robbie. That’s when things got worse.
Chris crawled through the hallway to the back door and was firing toward more men she hadn’t been aware of initially—men who’d been trying to gain entry through the back of the house.Rick was still in the living room under the window; the gunfire was tearing the place apart. Wave after wave of bullets pummeled the little farmhouse. He was crouched down when the worst, most unexpected thing happened. Through the window came a Molotov cocktail; instantly the living room went up in flames. Rick was in real trouble, and he knew it. A second flaming bottle soared through the air, this time toward the back door, where Chris was crouched. She shot the bottle in the air before it could reach the house. The explosion of heat and flame in the wet air was brilliant. The third bottle was in the air before she could react. It exploded in a flash of flames that set the back of the house in fire. She knew she’d gotten lucky with the first shot and also she knew she couldn’t hit them as fast as they were coming.
“Come out, Chris!” a voice echoed from outside the back door. “I know you’re in there. I’ll tell you what—you all throw your weapons out the window and walk outside, and I’ll kill you all quickly. Come on. What do you say? It’s better than both of you being burned alive.”
The house had filled up with smoke, and flames were moving up the walls toward the ceiling. Rick, unable to breathe, crouched low on the floor, gasping for air. In an attempt to crawl to Chris, he tried to move toward the back of the house but was unable to see through the thick smoke. Disoriented, he crawled under a stone table near the kitchen. Not being able to find his way to the back door, he tried to lie as low to the floor as possible.
Outside the house, Billy was still firing at the two near the canoe.
“You’re running out of time! All we want is you, Chris.”
Who the hell are these guys, and how do they know my name? Chris thought. Enough is enough! I either risk my friends being killed by not exposing my secret, or I save them, and whatever happens after that, happens. Not wasting any more time, in an instant Chris moved nearly one hundred feet away from the house, directly behind the three people who were still pointing their guns at the back door.
The men turned toward Chris and appeared startled. Her skin, with its light glow, looked almost transparent. Every muscle in her body tightened; her nails appeared claw-like. Smiling, she looked at the two men and displayed her sharp fangs.
As one of them raised his rifle toward her, she leapt on him before he could get a shot off. He was on his back now, with Chris ripping into his neck with her sharp teeth. As she tore at his flesh, the energy moved from her mouth throughout her body. She seldom took blood, but it was refreshing and vitalizing nonetheless.
The other two men stood looking at Chris in utter shock.
“You wanted me out of the house? Now you have me,” she said, turning her head toward the closest man with blood dripping from her lips. Chris, looking at him, wiped the blood from her mouth with her sleeve then licked her lips in a seductive manner. “Yummy.”Both men turned to run, but before they could move one foot, Chris leapt onto the man on the left. With her sharp claws, she slashed his back and neck with enough force that he fell to the ground on his stomach. Less than a second later, the last man also was dead after Chris grabbed his head and turned it hard to the right until she felt his neck snap in her hands.
Within three seconds f
rom when she had stood at the back door, she had killed three men. Chris, having tried so hard for so long to conceal her secret, seldom used her gift. The strength she demonstrated was as surprising to her as it had been the first time she had allowed herself to truly be free.
After leaving Billy under a tree near the front, Robbie ran around the back of the house, where he wasn’t surprised to see three bodies near the tree line. He wasn’t sure how they had died, but with no bullet wounds and their flesh torn apart, he had a good idea of what had happened.
Disregarding the mysterious deaths behind the house, he went straight to the back door. Without hesitation he ran into the burning farmhouse. In the kitchen he grabbed Rick, who was just four feet from the door. He helped him to his feet and led him outside. After he set Rick on the ground, he ran back into the house, looking for Chris. Only a few feet in, and he was gasping for air; each breath of the thick black smoke burned his lungs. Unable to see or breathe and using his arms to try to block the intense heat, Robbie turned and ran toward the only source of air, the door he had just entered through moments earlier.
At the threshold the roof came down in a wall of flames and smoke. As soon as Robbie was outside, he saw Chris lying next to Rick, just before he collapsed on the ground and passed out from the smoke inhalation. Robbie’s pants had fused to his left side; his face was bright pink; and the flames and heat had melted the skin on the left side of his body.
Billy continued to shoot until he ran out of ammo, at which point he raced around the back of the house to find his friends nearly dead. One hundred feet away, he watched as the little house, the horse stable and their livelihood burned to the ground.
Believing all four had been inside, the remaining soldiers gathered their weapons and walked away, leaving their dead comrades where they had fallen.
Billy spent hours carrying each of his friends and attempting to dress their wounds. One by one he carried them up the trail to the house in the woods. Once they were all at the house, he tended them as best he could, but he was no doctor, and he knew it.
Chris was the first to wake up and speak to Billy. He knew Chris, unlike Rick and Robbie, would be OK given time because he had known Chris’s secret since the day they’d met. Even after examining the bullet wound she had received in the neck after killing the three men, he knew she’d be just fine. It was Rick and Robbie who concerned him.
Looking at Robbie he couldn’t help feel the same as he had when the M.M. had dumped Chris in front of his cell. He wanted to help his friend, but the medical supplies had been in the house when it burned, nothing would help the situation. Robbie been burned badly, and although somewhat conscious, he wasn’t coherent.
Rick had fewer injuries, mostly from smoke inhalation, but after a bit of coughing and regaining his breath, he woke up, and it appeared he would recover after he got some rest.
Billy told Chris he needed to take care of the other two M.M. soldiers and would be back as soon as he could. Without giving her a chance to respond, he put on his black duster, which by then was worn and slightly tattered, along with his cowboy hat. He hadn’t worn either of them in a long time. He then slipped a single-barrel shotgun under his right shoulder so that it hung under his coat. After securing his revolvers under each arm and grabbing a small backpack, Billy gathered all the ammo he needed and walked out the door. There was in fact one thing he could do.
Anger. Rage. These words couldn’t describe what he was feeling. The one fact about Billy that he had kept to himself was that everything good in his life had been taken from him at one point or another. That was why he wasn’t about to let anything happen to his friends.
Although Billy’s past was somewhat of an enigma, there in fact was a reason for his hatred for the M.M. As he’d told Rick and Chris, when he was young, although he had never married, he did have a daughter that the child’s mother never would allow him to meet. After she was born, the mother kept him from his only child, so he started to drink. A year later his girlfriend walked away too, having been unable to deal with his building addiction. At least that was what she said when she left.
Eventually Billy spent eight years in the marines, which taught him reliance and self-worth. He learned to deal with difficult situations and to stay calm under pressure. After his stint in the military, he was sober and had a good job as a bouncer at various nightclubs. Over time he had made a name for himself in a few cities as a man who could stay calm under pressure and do the right thing. That job, however, ended after someone attacked him outside a club while he was walking a woman to her car.
It took nearly a year of physical therapy and surgeries for him to get back on his feet after he’d been stabbed and shot several times. He knew his time as a bouncer was over, and he was in no shape to return to the marines. Out of money and with medical bills piling up, Billy ended up living on the streets for a time before landing a job on a construction site. That lasted for a few years, but in the end, the job was too physically demanding after all the years of wear and tear on his body.
After the initial collapse of the federal government, Billy, like many people, was out of work and desperate. At the time he became involved with a new organization called Mors Mortis Military. Looking for answers in his life, and having bought into what they were preaching, so to speak, Billy joined the M.M. and quickly moved through the ranks. After a number of years, a founding board member handpicked him to take part in a new program called the Ghost Assembly. Billy accepted on the premise that they would be able to heal his body of the physical pain he was constantly in.
Having grown up in foster care and with no family of his own, he was the perfect candidate for the position. What he didn’t know was that while he was under anesthesia, they would genetically alter his DNA.
After nearly two months, Billy awoke from a drug-induced coma in the worst pain he’d ever experienced. It was as if every cell in his body had exploded and his soul had been set on fire. Over many months the pain finally subsided, and he was able to adapt to his altered body. He also found he had something he’d never had before: power, speed, slowed aging, and an enhanced gift for killing.
Within the M.M. every soldier knew what the Ghost Assembly was and who was in it. Billy was part of an elite group that made even the most highly trained soldiers look like harmless children. He was at the top of the food chain, and despite the initial physical pain, he liked it!
After he’d signed on to the Ghost Assembly, suddenly nothing in his past—family, friends, or jobs—mattered. The world was falling apart, but for him it was a chance to start over, and this time he’d be standing on the pile of ash, not under it.
As a Ghost, Billy eventually discovered a truth he wasn’t prepared to accept at first: the fact that vampires did indeed exist. His mission had one specific order: hunt and capture every vampire.
He became a master of his trade, an adept killer, but despite his involvement with the M.M., he still felt something was missing in his life. He knew the M.M. never would let him leave, but after he learned of their ruthless tactics and crimes, which were becoming more prevalent, he was considering walking away, despite having become the leader of the entire Ghost Assembly.
After being directly responsible for the capture of hundreds of vampires, Billy received a mission that seemed like any other. He was tasked with retrieving a male vampire the M.M. had trapped and left in the cell of a police station in a small town. The mission seemed simple and not much different from any of his past missions.
While Billy was on that mission, a loyal M.M. soldier gave him some unsettling inside information. The soldier, whom he’d known and trusted for years, informed him that the founding members of the M.M., also known as the Nine, were aware of his desire to leave their organization. Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing when the soldier told him the Nine given had a group of soldiers direct orders to track Billy’s daughter and lure her to the jail so they could use her as leverage to keep him from leaving. The
y would go to any length to ensure that Billy wouldn’t walk away.
Billy’s informant told him his daughter had been traveling with a male companion and eventually would make her way to the town where the vampire was being incarcerated. He knew right then that it wasn’t a coincidence that she would be in that area. The Nine and the M.M. were leading her there, whether she knew it or not.
Immediately Billy made an abrupt decision. He was walking away from the M.M. for good. He knew they’d never stop pursuing him, but maybe he could get to his daughter first and at the least give her some protection.
Now, years later, the M.M. had crossed the line by attacking the farmhouse, and Billy would be damned if anyone was going to take her away from him again. With Robbie badly hurt and Rick nearly losing his life, he owed them. Rick, Robbie, and Chris had given him his life back, and now it was time to avenge his family the only way he knew how.
Digging deep into his past, he thought only one thing: Semper fidelis, Latin for “Always faithful.”
TWENTY EIGHT
The fun and games were over. Billy made himself a promise: he was going to kill every M.M. he came across. They had messed with the wrong marine. All his training, everything from his days in the marine infantry, all the skills he had acquired flooded into his mind. To him it was as if no time had passed between his time in the Gulf War and that very moment.
Billy followed the M.M. soldiers away from the little farmhouse, tracking their every step. He was a few hours behind them, but he had the tactical advantage because they thought he was dead. Unknown to them, he was on their trail and gaining fast.
A Town Called America Page 13
