“You’re correct that he left America, but he didn’t die,” said Mr. Black. “Rick moved east and began to recruit soldiers, and since you’ve all turned the public against us in a slash-and-destroy campaign, he’s found it all too easy to recruit humans. So to fix this myself, I’ve located and brought Chris here and offered her a place at our table. We now have a vacant seat, don’t we? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say.”
“Sir, if I may, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Mr. C said.
At that moment Chris walked into the room, stopping to stand next to Mr. Magnus. “Gentlemen, Mr. Magnus and I have struck a compromise that we feel will benefit all involved. I understand and agree to the arrangements.”
FORTY TWO
After the M.M. had taken Chris, Billy stayed with Robbie. Reluctantly, he gave Robbie Chris’ blood. It hadn’t been his first choice, but Billy saw no other option that would allow his young friend to stay alive. Billy drug Robbie to a puddle of Chris’ blood, outside telling him to drink it, which he did just before Billy gave him the same guidance he’d given Chris so many years earlier when she had changed. In time Robbie had regained his strength, and when he did he traveled east with Billy to meet with the resistance had formed over the last few years. They traveled through Iowa and Illinois into Kentucky and Tennessee until they reached Georgia. Just a few miles from the Tennessee-Georgia border, Billy and Robbie met with the Second Fighting Regiment of the Army for the Free People of America.
After watching the troops train, Robbie immediately realized the soldiers weren’t only well trained but also were ready for war. They were all tired of the fighting, yet they were ready to fight, but only as a means to an end.
Inside a green army tent, Rick sat at a small table under the glow of an oil lamp, looking at a map of eastern Georgia.
“Sir, two people are here to see you.”
“Bring them in, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ricky, my God, it’s been forever and a day,” Billy said, beaming with a tender smile.
“Billy, I have no idea how you and Robbie found me, but I sure am glad to see you both.” Rick turned to the soldier in the tent. “Captain, get coffee for these two.”
“Yes, General. Right away.”
“General? Wow, look at you in your fancy uniform. Who would have thought?” Robbie said, just before they hugged each other.
They all sat down and drank coffee while chatting about old times, happy and smiling, until the subject became more serious.
“Ricky, something’s happened, and we need your help.”
“What is it, Billy?”
“Chris is gone. The M.M. has taken her. I know where she is, and if we don’t—”
“Billy, you won’t believe me when I tell you this. I loved her—oh, God, I loved her—but something happened to her. She changed, and I couldn’t stay with her any longer, so that’s why I told her to leave. I was out walking on a day just like any other. I don’t know how to say this. Chris was…she was eating someone. I’m serious—she was literally biting into someone, and when I saw her, she looked different, like some kind of creature.”
“Rick, please have your captain leave the tent,” Billy said.
Rick nodded, and a moment later, the soldier stepped out.
“Ricky, listen to me very carefully. Chris is a vampire. That’s the only way I can put it to you. She’s what they call a vampire, an ancient race that has lived on earth since the beginning of time.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Billy? This isn’t a joke.”
Billy looked at Robbie then back at Rick.
In that instant Robbie’s eyes clouded over with a blackness that was darker than night; his skin glowed in the light of the oil lamp as his facial futures began to transform.
“I won’t hurt you,” Robbie said, as Rick jumped back in his chair, falling backward.
“What the hell are you?”Rick attempted to scream, to call out for help, but nothing happened. He was unable to utter a single syllable.
Robbie moved closer to him and reached out his hand, touching Rick’s cheek. In that moment everything Robbie ever had experienced he shared with Rick. Robbie’s entire life was now known to Rick: every thought, feeling, emotion, and experience. Every secret—even how he had felt about Chris—he gave to Rick. Nothing was hidden, not even the death of his second wife when the M.M. had destroyed a town called America.
After that Rick felt no fear, and he understood that although vampires needed blood to survive, not all of them were evil.
For the rest of the evening, Rick asked question after question about vampires and made plans to use his army to destroy the M.M. once and for all.
His final request was an ultimatum. “You want my support? You want to finally be rid of the M.M.? Then make me a vampire too.”
Over the next two weeks, Billy, Rick, and Robbie devised a plan to simultaneously storm the M.M. headquarters, while attacking every know M.M. base. It was the only way they would accomplish their mission. Thanks to Billy’s intelligence and information regarding the M.M., they had an edge that would help their war effort.
As the new M.M. capitol was still under construction, its temporary capitol was located on a massive cruise ship called The Gem of the Seas.
Having sent soldiers on scouting missions to gather as much information regarding M.M bases and the ship as they could find, Rick was able to make some fairly certain conclusions about what they were dealing with.
The Gem of the Seas, standing 236 feet above the waterline and more than 1,200 feet in length, was the largest and grandest of any cruise ship ever built. It had sixteen passenger decks, and because of its size, attacking such a vessel could prove extremely difficult. Rick knew the ship could hold at least six thousand people, and although he doubted the M.M. had nearly that many aboard, he wasn’t taking any chances.
Sinking the vessel was their only option, especially since they had the necessary explosives, so the plan would require getting someone inside to plant them. The trick would be to do it without getting caught, so they decided to simply storm the ship, take it by force, and plant the explosives. The Gem of the Seas was floating roughly twenty miles off the Georgia coast and most certainly had armed guards and heavy artillery to protect it. The key to the mission’s success would be the element of surprise.
All worked diligently around the clock to plan every detail of the mission. Battle drills, planning, and preparation were conducted until the commanders for the Army for the Free People of America were ready to brief their subordinates. The war was just around the corner and would be carried out perfectly or end in their deaths.
It was late in the evening, and Billy and Robbie were asleep while Rick stayed up, finalizing the details of his battle plan. He was on his third cup of coffee and alone in his command tent, feeling the anxiety of the impending war. His scouts had returned earlier with information that the area around them was still secure, and there were no signs of enemy patrols. Rick thanked the two men and released them for the night.
A single oil lamp that hung from a support beam cast a dim light throughout the tent. The floor was nothing more than ground that had been cleared of rocks and debris. Near a cot at the far end of the tent, Rick sat at his desk with his back to the door. It was quiet, and he wondered whether this was the calm before the storm. The air in the tent was cool, as it was now autumn, and the leaves were beginning to turn reddish brown and fall to the ground.
Rick took his last sip of coffee. He was tired, and his eyes were strained from looking over map after map of the George coastline. The last few years had taken their toll on him, and it was showing, as his hair was now turning gray, and the lines in his face were much more prominent. The one thing he knew, however, was that despite being shot, stabbed, and burned and having had so many other close calls with death, he had to be part of a bigger plan. Despite his mistakes he truly believed he was where he was
supposed to be.
Rick took off his green army jacket and hung it on a nail in one of the support posts. He grabbed the lantern from its hook, set it on a small table next to his cot, and blew out the yellow flame. Instantly the tent went dark, and he closed his eyes. Exhausted, he hadn’t bothered to undress; he just lay down on his cot and kicked off his boots, knowing in a moment he would be asleep
After a few minutes, he was just about to drift off when he sat straight up. An overwhelming feeling that he wasn’t alone moved through his mind, but a second later, it disappeared. Rick lay back down and once again closed his eyes.
“Rick…”
Again he sat up in bed; this time he was sure he’d heard a voice. Scanning the tent, however, he saw no one. Thoughts raced through his mind. Could it be a spirit? Perhaps a reoccurrence of that night in the police station so many years ago, that night when he had his first encountered what he’d thought was a spirit just before Chris had disappeared?
Forcing those thoughts out of his mind, Rick again tried to sleep.
“You’re still as sexy as ever.”
Pretending to sleep, Rick turned on his side but kept one eye open, close to his pillow. Scanning the tent again, he thought he could make out a figure standing on the far side, near the door.
Was it his imagination? Was someone really there? The voice sounded so familiar.
All at once Rick’s mind drifted off into a pleasant place, a place that was comfortable and without stress. As hard as he fought it, he had lost his fear, and now the figure was kneeling beside his cot, looking him in the eyes.
“Chris? Is it really you?”
“Yes, my love. Rick, why did you make me leave?”
“I…I saw you, and you were something else…a vampire.”
“I never intended for that to happen. I kept it a secret to protect you. Let me touch you, Rick, so I can share my experiences with you, and then you’ll understand.”
“Yes.” That was all Rick said.
When Chris placed her hand on Rick’s forehead, images rushed through his mind, almost as if they were pure light. When she removed her hand from his forehead, he opened his eyes and looked at her as if it were the first time they had kissed.
Rick knew he had control of his mind again, and he also knew every experience Chris had been through in her entire life—the abuse when she was young, how she felt the moment she first saw Rick in his El Camino; it was all there, every emotion. As the pictures in his mind became clearer, Rick wept, as he knew how she’d felt at every moment, both good and bad.
Rick sat up in bed, and Chris straddled him. After pulling off his shirt, she ran her hands over his chest and kissed him from his belly button to the top of his chest. Rick’s hands dug deep into her back as their lips touched lightly. With Chris’s shirt off, their bodies moved in perfect rhythm. Chris pulled open Rick’s pants to reveal how eager he was to be with her.
Embracing each other with a passion neither had felt since their parting years earlier, Rick and Chris made love through the night. The only sign that any time had passed between their separation and that very moment was that Chris’s skin was now aglow in a magnificent yellow.
FORTY THREE
The next morning Billy and Robbie walked into the tent to find Rick in his cot with a woman. With no way to tell who it was, as the sheet was covering her head, Billy told the harlot to get the hell out of the bed, as they had business to attend to.
“You need to hit the road, woman,” he said.
Chris sat up in the cot while the sheets over her bare breasts. “Harlot? Well, it’s nice to see you too.”
“Chris? How? Where did you come from? I thought the M.M. captured you.”
“I can explain everything. Just let me get dressed, and we’ll sit down to talk.”
“OK, sure,” Robbie said, confused and unsure as to how she had come to be there.
After dressing, Chris explained everything that had happened to her in the last few weeks, how she had managed to return, and how she had met with the Nine.
After she had been shot in the head, the last thing she remembered was darkness. Images flashed in her mind, and voices were all around her, moving through her, but nothing made sense.
She awoke to find herself trapped in a crate, the same type of crate that had held slaves years ago when she and Robbie had hid in the ventilation shaft. Looking through the small window, Chris saw hundreds of other crates, all with people in them. She soon figured out that she was on some kind of oil rig, as she saw the ocean in the distance, as well as steel pipes, tubes, and towers.
Not ten feet from her cage, near the edge of the oil-rig platform, she saw a large crane the stretched out over the water, with four thick chains hanging from it.
Chris, with her hands wrapped around the bars in the window, watched with great curiosity as two men attached the chains to the four corners of another cage. Each cage sat on rollers, the kind of rollers cargo workers once had used to load pallets onto airplanes. After running the ropes through the loops, the two men gave the cage a mild push, and it slid off the oil rig until it hung freely in the air.
“Free!” one of the men yelled.
Two seconds later the cage, with its occupant trapped inside, was released from the crane. A moment later a Chris heard a tremendous splash as the cage hit the water below. After being completely submerged, the cage slid to the depths of the ocean floor.
“You see that, missy?” one of the men said to Chris. “That’ll be you in a few minutes. Your lungs will fill with water, and you’ll drown. After that you can expect to spend eternity trapped at the bottom of the Atlantic in your own personal purgatory. What do you think about that?”
Fury, fear, and anger raged through Chris’s mind. Shaking the bars and screaming, she struggled to escape her cage.
“Whoa, look at you. You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”
“Let me out!” she demanded.
As the two men attached the chains to Chris’s cage, she moved to the rear of her cell, watching the world close in around her. At the back of her cage, she sat thinking. Then it came to her; she remembered something Billy had given her when she had returned to find America destroyed: his prized stamp collection. But why? she asked herself. At the time he had told her that no matter what happened, she had to keep it safe. Then it occurred to her that it could be the source of the power he had displayed.
Chris, with the small leather book in her pocket, knew she was running out of time, as she felt the cage begin to move. She removed a single stamp from the book and placed it on her tongue. At once she felt the effects. A surge of energy flowed through her body; her skin changed, and her eyes went dark, as they had so many times in the past.
Her mind was clear and moving a thousand times faster than it ever had. The cages weren’t filled with slaves or deserters; they were filled with vampires. They weren’t soulless beasts, nor were they evil creatures from the depths of hell. Yes, they needed blood, but that wasn’t by choice; it was a necessity, just like food was for humans. But just like humans, if they were pushed far enough, vampires would fight back, and Chris had been pushed too far.
She raised her hands in the air and leaned her head back to look toward the top of the cage. Energy moved up her spine like a wave of ice-cold emotion. Whipping her hands down to her sides, Chris knelt and threw her arms straight up as the cage began to slide off the platform toward the ocean.
A blast of energy blew off the entire roof of the cage, knocking down both M.M. soldiers in the wave of heat and energy that radiated for fifteen feet.
Just as the cage was falling off the oil platform, Chris jumped from her kneeling position straight up through the open roof, thirty feet into the air. She grabbed a rope with both hands as the cage hit the water far below. In an instant she landed on the deck and, without making physical contact, pointed at one of the soldiers, who was now trying to stand. As Chris raised her hand, the soldier flew over the side of the platfor
m into the water below.
Chris was now looking at the second soldier, who stood in utter shock and fear. Not having to speak, she merely thought the words, and the soldier did as her mind commanded. He pulled out his pistol and shot himself in the head; he was dead before his body hit the deck.
As Chris ran to the nearest cage in an attempt to open it and free the vampire inside, a sharp pain shot through the back of her neck. She fell to her knees, dizzy and confused. She grabbed at her neck and pulled out the tranquilizer dart that had been protruding from her flesh. Dropping the dart, Chris fell to the platform, unconscious. Her last thought was How could this happen a second time?
When she awoke she was in a small room, strapped to a bed by the wrists and ankles. The room had a steel door and one single light affixed to the wall just above it. It was windowless, dark, and damp, and the only other thing she could see was a closed-circuit TV camera in the corner near the ceiling.
With all her strength, she tried to free herself, but the thick leather straps were too strong. The door then opened with the sound of rusty metal. Chris watched as a tall man in a black suit entered.
“After all this time, we finally meet,” he said. “I do apologize for the circumstances, but you must understand certain precautions must be taken in order to ensure our safety. I know all about you,” he continued. “In fact I’ve been a fan of yours for a very long time. Even when you were a human, you were something special to watch. But then, after you received the gift of being a vampire, you became even more astounding. I’ve allowed you to live this long in part because it’s been entertaining and also because to destroy you would be like destroying a fine work of art. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mr. Magnus.”
“Well, I’m glad I could be so entertaining for you,” Chris said, “but if you think I won’t kill you, you’ve surely underestimated me.”
“Chris, please, there’s no need to be hostile. I’m here to help you understand, and you’ll understand more than you think.”
A Town Called America Page 22
